


A Hollow Ache

by gleamingandwholeanddeadly (something_safe)



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: AU Fic, Canon-Typical Violence, Even though honestly all evidence suggests he should just not, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Florence - Freeform, Frottage, Gore, Hannibal has a really crap way of showing someone he loves them, Hannibal is a Cannibal, Hannibal is a massive loser for romance, Hannibal is pretending to be Roman Fell, Honestly Hannibal fucking adores Will in this, M/M, Mason Verger being Mason Verger, Murder, Sex, Wendigo, Will Loves Hannibal, Will is a civilian on vacation, Will is a sweetie pie, canon minor character death, hannibal being scary, some psychological horror, some violence, spot of light disemboweling, tourist au, vague plot cross overs, will committing a violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2018-12-24 02:02:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12002619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/something_safe/pseuds/gleamingandwholeanddeadly
Summary: AU where Will is a civilian on vacation who meets Hannibal while he's on the run in Florence. Of course Hannibal is incapable of keeping a low profile, so he immediately offers to play tour guide. They fall in love.This was just a short something I wrote to get out of my head after rewatching 'Dolce', but then it spiraled out of control and now it's turned into.... an entire thing.





	1. Chapter 1

Hannibal draws for a long time before he becomes aware of a pair of eyes upon him.  The gallery is generally quiet at this time of night, and the direction of the attention is easy to deduce. Hannibal smells coffee and whiskey. Looking up, he catches the eye of a young man, bookishly and scruffily handsome in spectacles, curls, and a shirt collar peeking from the lapels of his jacket. At Hannibal’s confrontation, he ducks his head and blushes, looking wholeheartedly embarrassed.

“I’m uh- I’m so sorry, I was- your drawing. It’s beautiful.” His throat bobs nervously. “I got a bit caught up watching you, I didn’t mean to be uh- intense.”

Hannibal considers him for a moment, eyes travelling from his face, down to his leather shoes. He has a black eye, and a few cuts and scrapes to go with it.

“Intensity is good,” Hannibal says finally, “a passionate fixation on the things which bring us enjoyment. To earn such attention must be the highest compliment for an artist.”

“Well yeah,” the young man nods, curls bobbing, “I was very fixated. I’m not sure yours isn’t better than the original.”

Looking up at the Primavera, and then down at his work dubiously, Hannibal allows a smile.

“That’s very kind.”

“It’s true. Is that what you do, you’re an artist?”

Hannibal pauses again. He thinks of corpses left behind; of Jack Crawford analysing his work.

“Yes,” he decides, “though a lot of my work is conceptual rather than physical.”

“Do you ever show paintings?” The stranger looks so keenly innocent that Hannibal can’t even be irritated with his continued questioning, in this sacred place. He’s still looking at the floor instead of Hannibal, like perhaps eye contact is unpleasant for him. Hannibal wonders if he’s on the spectrum. There’s an air of hesitance about him, like he’s pushing himself to be brave.

“I do not,” Hannibal indulges him, “but I occasionally sell pieces. In fact, some of these sketches are to be taken down to the market in a few days.”

That makes the stranger’s eyes go bright.

“Perhaps I should come and buy one, to commemorate my trip.”

“That would be lovely,” Hannibal says, and finds it’s not entirely a lie. He proffers a hand. “My name is Roman Fell, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Oh- thank you. Will Graham.” He shakes it, still looking at Hannibal’s shoes; his hands.

“You’re from the States.”

“Yeah, I’m on vacation.”

“From what?”

“Oh, uh, life in general, really.” Will gives a smile that is too much teeth, not enough lift.

“That bad?” Hannibal jokes.

“Just about. I uh, I just separated from my wife, so. It seemed a good time to get away from it all.”

“Travel can put personal troubles in perspective,” Hannibal agrees, politely, “and Florence is the perfect place to remind you it’s not all doom and gloom.”

Certainly not gloom, anyway.

“Honestly, it’s a little overwhelming,” Will admits, looking embarrassed again, “I’m lost all the time, I have so many things on my agenda but- finding everything has been a little tricky. I’m a teacher, you see, and some of this stuff-” he gestures at the paintings, “I’ve wanted to see for years, but now that I’m here, it just feels like too much.”

Sighing, he drops his head. “God, I’m sorry, I’m not usually like this- I think I’m just… too full of the last few months. Likely to spill over if I stumble, y’know?”

Despite his words, he doesn’t seem to be reaching. Even so, Hannibal feels compelled to close the gap. Will Graham seems very lost.

“That’s understandable. I know a little about how you feel. Please,” he starts to write down an address, “meet me tomorrow, let me show you around.”

Visibly surprised, Will holds a hand up when Hannibal offers the paper, but then seems to stop himself.

“I’m- that’s very kind, but I couldn’t, I don’t want to intrude on your vacation.”

“It’s no intrusion, I have been in Florence for many weeks now, I know it well. It would be a pleasure to show you some of the sights.”

Eyes still hesitant, Will accepts the paper.

“You’re sure?”

“Of course. Get a taxi to the Bargello tomorrow, let’s say noon, we could get lunch.”

Will still looks like he’s struggling to accept. Hannibal finds his constant state of fluster surprisingly endearing.

“All right,” he agrees finally, “that sounds- nice.”

Hannibal closes up his sketchbook and stands.

“I look forward to it. It was a pleasure to meet you, Will Graham.”

And then he leaves him.

*

The next day, Hannibal waits at a streetside café with a newspaper, sipping espresso and wondering if Will Graham will materialise today. He spent a long time last night pondering his decision to offer to play tour guide, and he’s still pondering it today. On the one hand: being out and about in Florence raises the probability of someone recognising him, but on the other: a few more alibis here and there couldn’t hurt.

On the third- and most prominent- hand: Hannibal is bored. Florence has endless rare delights to offer, but he had forgotten how debilitating it could feel to be alone, surrounded by them.

Knowing himself as he does, Hannibal senses that if he doesn’t allow himself to be reckless in small, controlled doses, he will become reckless in a much greater sense. If the tourist becomes a problem, Hannibal knows exactly how to remedy it. Still, he doesn’t know what to make of the fact that Will didn’t immediately- or visibly- recognise him.  His escape from Baltimore must have been kept quiet to avoid panic.

Musing, he raises his cup again, creasing the paper in his hand with his thumb to keep it rigid, and then pauses when he sees a small taxi skid to a halt by the curb, across the market square. A familiar head of curled hair rises from the passenger side door, and Hannibal can’t contain his small, surprised smile.

Seeing him from across the street, Will raises a hand in a little, self-conscious wave, and Hannibal nods his recognition, watching him pick his way through the crowd and stalls from beneath the brim of his hat. Will looks neater than he had yesterday, a starched shirt and blazer covering broad shoulders. He dips his head, shy as ever, and Hannibal feels a little flare of heat ignite in the pit of his stomach.

“Would you care for a coffee?” Hannibal asks, gesturing to a nearby waiter. “I’m not quite finished.”

“That’s fine, coffee sounds great.” Sitting himself down carefully at the little patio table, Will picks up a menu.

“Please, let me.” Hannibal asks the waiter for two more espresso and a plate of bread and oil, and some olives.

“Are you fluent in Italian?”

“I speak several languages, my education was very thorough.”

Will looks a bit embarrassed again, like he’s not enjoying the feeling.

“You had notes on your drawing yesterday in English, I hadn’t really thought much beyond that.”

“That’s very observant of you, Will.”

“Like I said, I’m intense.”

Smiling, Hannibal drains the last of his espresso, folding down his newspaper and setting it on the empty seat beside him.

“You’re not alone in that. Can I ask what kind of teacher you are, Will?”

“Psychology,” Will smiles. Hannibal’s curiosity swells.

“Ah, so you like to know how the mind works.”

“I like to know what stops it working.”

“Something you have experience with?”

“That obvious?”

“You flinch from noise, like you’re constantly overstimulated.”

“That’s accurate. I find life in general to be overstimulating.”

“That’s very interesting.” Hannibal studies him, openly, and Will keeps staring at the table top.

“Do you just paint?” He asks, when the silence has lingered a moment too long.

“I actually teach a little myself. I specialise in Renaissance and Pre-renaissance scholars.”

“Like Dante?”

“And then some.” Hannibal smiles.

“Makes sense I suppose, you seem like you’re very at home here.”

“Florence is very special to me; I came here when I was a young man and, in addition to historical revelations, I learnt a great deal about myself.”

“I hope I find it as rewarding. I’d like to learn something new about myself.”

Hannibal smiles wider at that, watching the sunlight glint of Will’s glasses. “I will make it my mission to assist you.”

*

Sunshine keeps Will in a narrow prism, and Hannibal takes a long moment to watch him, unobserved, as Will examines a brightly glazed cameo. They’re lingering in the yawning rooms of the Bargello, sparsely accompanied by a few milling tourists. Hannibal keeps finding himself in this position, watching Will from a safe distance, studying him like he’s part of the exhibition they’re here for.

Like he can feel his gaze, Will turns to glance at Hannibal over his shoulder, and his smile is something like coy as he catches him looking.

“Hard to believe they could turn somewhere like this into a prison,” he murmurs, as Hannibal moves to stand close behind his shoulder.

“Anywhere can become a prison, if you spend enough time there.”

“Do you feel imprisoned, Roman?” Will asks, innocently. Hannibal fails to keep from stalling a bit at the name.

“Sometimes.”

“Not today?”

Even though he’s looking at the sculptures again, Hannibal can tell he’s smiling that small smile again.

“No, not today,” he promises, and then he asks, “would you like to join me for dinner?”

*

“How many times have you seen this?” Will asks, peering up at David, his eyes soft with awe.

“At least a dozen,” Hannibal admits, “but he never loses his charm.”

“He always looks sullen, doesn’t he? Petulant.”

“He looks so many things, from so many different angles. I always think he looks afraid.”

“Do you think he begged to be released from the stone?” Will asks, voice taking on a faraway tone. “Do artists heed the calls of their work, or does the work serve the purpose of the artist?”

“I think it depends on the artist,” Hannibal murmurs. He sees Will then, crystal clear and beautiful. He thinks of him balanced on a marble block, draped in blood stained cloth and laurels, balanced in the arms of the Madonna, a halo of curls around a marblesque face.

“What about you then?” Will glances at him. “Do you free your art, or does it free you?”

*

They spend time together whenever possible for the next couple of weeks, and as Hannibal tells him more and more about himself, only some of it fictitious, he sees a different side to Will starting to emerge. He has a dry, sharp sense of humour, and a low-key penchant for melodrama that amuses Hannibal no end. He finds Will’s company to be very pleasing, a welcome distraction to the monotony that had started to overcome him. Their hours are filled with conversational duelling, and Hannibal is fascinated by the way Will manages to be both earnest and open one moment, scathing and withdrawn the next.

It occurs to Hannibal with some horror that, at some point, he has become obsessed with him.

They’re walking along the Ponte Santa Trinita when Will pauses, looking out over the emerald water of the Arno with a longing in his eyes that Hannibal recognises with aching familiarity.

“I have to go home soon,” Will starts, in a small voice, “I don’t know what I’ll do when I get back. Everything seems so dull in comparison to this.”

A flash of regret spears Hannibal’s gut. He lets his teeth catch on his lower lip and tug, then steps up so that their shoulders nudge.

“What will happen when you return?”

Will shrugs.

“Back to work. Back to finalising the separation of our assets. I just need to sign the paperwork when it’s ready.”

Will hasn’t spoken about his wife much- or his ex-wife, as she has recently become. Hannibal gets a feeling it’s mostly an unwillingness to break the fantasy. Following his gaze across the water, Hannibal lets out a slight sigh.

“And then what?”

“Good question,” Will murmurs.

They’re silent again, two more marble statues in Florence. The evening air is balmy, and the low hung sun has kissed every window along the river bank, turning them to diamonds on the horizon. In the glow, Will looks forlorn, and serious, and beautiful. Hannibal had not mentally allowed for this scenario, but now it’s here, he can’t let it go. Where their hands hang by their sides, their knuckles brush.

“Come,” he says, taking hold of his wrist, “let me make you some supper.”

*

In the quiet of Hannibal’s rooms, Will looks jarringly out of place. He’s in crisp, pale blue and grey, a cold blot in a room of rich gold accents and fiery frescos. He sits gingerly on a quilted silk sofa, like he’s worried he’ll leave a stain, and Hannibal wants to reassure him he belongs there. He’s opened the balcony doors to let out the heat of the day, and the first stars are just starting to wink to life in the dulling yellow sky.

“Can I do anything to help with dinner?” Will asks.

“Certainly not, what kind of a host would I be, if I had my guests working for my hospitality?” He lifts a bottle of white wine from the chiller on the table and decants, passing a glass to Will. “You never told me what happened to your face.”

“You never told me what happened to yours,” Will counters. That makes Hannibal thoughtful for a moment, considering.

“I was in a physical altercation with someone I once considered a friend,” he says eventually.

“Me too,” Will supplies, “I wouldn’t have thought you were a physical altercation kind of guy, Roman.”

“I can get my hands dirty with the best of them. Let me show you.”

Moving through to the kitchen, Hannibal gestures for Will follow him, starting the prep for dinner.

“Shall I put a record on?”  Will asks, “I saw a vinyl player in the parlour.”

“Go ahead.”

Will disappears, and soon, the music starts. When he reappears, he’s smiling.

“Your apartment is incredible, even the furniture, everything is so beautiful.”

Hannibal looks at him. “I like to be surrounded by beautiful things at all times.”

He’s not certain, but he thinks Will’s ears are turning pink. Smiling, he starts to dice meat, and the kitchen is soon filled with the scent of cooking.

After dinner, Hannibal supplies Will with a glass of whiskey, and they stand on the balcony to look over the river, Will’s hair tousling in the wind.

“I have something for you,” Hannibal says, suddenly, “wait there.”

He heads to the desk on the far wall to retrieve two pieces of thick drawing paper. On one is the sketch Will had first seen him drawing in the Uffizi, the figures of the Primavera picked out in intricate pencil. When he hands over the second, Will’s eyes go wide. He doesn’t speak for what feels like a lifetime, and when he does make a sound, it’s a breath like he’s been punched.

“It’s so beautiful,” he utters, looking at Hannibal disbelievingly. “I have to pay you for this-”

“You’ll do no such thing. It’s a gift.”

It had felt like a gift for Hannibal too, seeing Will in that prism of light, like he was flanked by heavenly bodies in the centre of a triptych. The image is branded in Hannibal’s mind, and it had run out onto the paper in smooth charcoal, somehow taking on an edge of melancholia that seems fitting, now.

Will can’t stop looking from one drawing to the other. He swallows several times, like there’s a lump he can’t get rid of, and eventually he takes a long drink of his whiskey and shudders as it goes down.

“Let me go and put them in a tube for you,” Hannibal offers. Will seems reluctant to release them, but he nods, and when Hannibal returns, he sees Will wipe his face hastily on his sleeve.

“Thank you,” he tells him seriously. Hannibal just smiles and squeezes his shoulder. Predictably, Will goes a little quiet again then, looking over the edge of the balcony again. Hannibal waits patiently for him to recover, feeling thoroughly touched by his reaction.

“It’s not even Summer and it feels warm,” Will says eventually, “I live in Virginia, and the Winters there are Hell compared to this. Not compared to some places, but definitely compared to this.” He pauses, and corrects himself. “Well, I guess I don’t live there now. I don’t really know where I live.”

“You haven’t found anywhere?”

“I can’t afford anywhere just yet.”

“What will you do until you can?”

“I have a friend who says I can sleep on her couch.

The thought makes Hannibal sigh. Will looks into his wine glass.

“Being here with you has been- it’s really helped me,” he confesses, when the silence gets too weighty, “I hope this doesn’t sound too alarming but- when I got here, I wasn’t really sure if I’d tough it out. I don’t know how to explain how I feel.”

“Try,” Hannibal suggests.

“It feels so hard sometimes- people struggle to understand me, but you don’t seem to struggle. You’re so calm all the time, like you know you can survive anything.”

“I’ve survived a great many things so far,” Hannibal breathes, “that’s how I know.”

“I thought that might be the case,” Will murmurs. He takes a sip of his whiskey, then sighs and leans into Hannibal’s side. “Whatever it was, you didn’t deserve it.”

Breath catching in his throat, Hannibal stares out at the sky until he remembers how to speak again.

“Words usually don’t fail me,” he tells him, softly, “you’ve done quite the number on me.”

“Likewise,” Will laughs, sounding nervous. Hannibal swallows heavily.

“Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t go back.”

It’s barely above a breath, his voice snatched away on the wind. Will stays silent, and Hannibal thinks perhaps he didn’t hear him, until he feels Will’s fingers lace with his own, his hand cool and a bit damp from the condensation on his glass.

“I’d be breaking the law. I don’t think I can just disappear.”

“It’s easier than you think. All you need is a new name, a new passport, and a new home.”

He sees Will look at him from his periphery. He blinks, twice, then swallows. Hannibal turns to him, and for the second time, he meets Will’s eyes, blue and clear and bottomless. The last of the sun is disappearing behind him, leaving a livid red cut in the dusky sky.

“Stay with me,” he says. Will wets his lips, eyelids flickering briefly.

“This is crazy,” he says, which isn’t a no.

“Is it? It doesn’t feel crazy.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Will agrees. He leans to press their foreheads together, slowly like he’s not sure he’s allowed to, and Hannibal’s senses are filled with the scent of his warm skin. He slides a hand to Will’s waist, touch deer-slow, and tries to remember if he’s ever blindly wanted like this before. This is exactly the kind of reckless he’d been hoping to avoid, but now it’s here, he’s ready to step off the edge of it. He thinks Will is too.

“I’ve never done this before,” Will murmurs, glancing down at the balcony floor between them.

“Nor have I,” Hannibal confesses, “but I intend to.” He raises his free hand, and Will’s cheek falls against it, his own skating up to touch Hannibal’s wrists. Their lips brush, fleetingly at first, and then with more intent. Hannibal is bewitched by the taste of Will’s lips; the way he’s captured his attention so completely. They become entangled, every kiss a plea for more, and when they finally ease back, they’re both tense with need.

“Your name isn’t Roman, is it?” Will breathes. They press in closer once more, and Hannibal shakes his head. “You’re not a teacher, or an artist.”

“Not originally.”

“Are you- actually, no, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“It does, but not like that.”

Hannibal looks at him, really looks at him, and sees that Will’s expression is as honest as it ever is, his lashes catching the light.

“I’ll tell you, when you’re ready.”

“I’m ready whenever you want to tell me,” Will promises. Hannibal has to kiss him again then.

“Stay with me,” he repeats.

Will nods hastily, and their lips touch once again. “I’m staying.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Hannibal try to decide if they're crazy, crazy in love, or both. Will navigates his first couple of days with Hannibal whilst trying to come to terms with his past, and there are first times. Contains sex and psychology.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters are short, partially because I'm impatient and partially because I want there to be a vignette-like feeling to the scenes. This one went a little longer, but I hope it still has a peek-behind-the-curtain quality to it.  
> Thank you for the very kind words on the first chapter, it really is encouraging. x

When Will wakes up, it’s with a breeze on his shoulder from the open bedroom window, the morning sun making Hannibal’s white sheets glow. He’s alone, but there’s an impermanent edge to it, like his presence still lingers. There is a pot of coffee on the bedside next to him, and beside that, a handwritten note with a cell phone number: _Call me when you wake up x_. Will drags himself upright against the headboard, pouring a cup of the coffee, and sighs in near-content.

Last night, Hannibal had walked him to his hotel to retrieve his belongings, helping him pack and check-out like it was what they had always planned, even though Will still didn’t even know Hannibal’s name. They’d walked back through the cobbled streets carrying a bag each, hands clasped between them, and when Will had looked at Hannibal the sharp planes of his face were picked out in amber light and deep shadows.

“Does it bother you that neither of us has ever been attracted to a guy before now?” Will had asked, looking up to the narrow gaps between the tall streets, seeing clouds kissed by the pale lips of moonlight.

“If I’m honest, I’ve seldom been attracted to anyone,” Hannibal confessed, voice taking on a measure of apology, “the few relationships I’ve had in the past have been born of opportunity, and a lack of reason to object. This is not that.”

Will still thought about that now. He thought about how Hannibal had ushered him inside and up the stairs when they’d gotten into the courtyard of his apartment building, his hand lingering on Will’s wrist; the small of his back. Inside, Hannibal had taken Will’s face in his hands and kissed him, and kissed him, and Will still thinks he’s never had kisses like it. It had felt like learning and sharing secrets, making something completely new. Every touch  was like the warmth from the sun, fiercely bright. When they could hardly stand anymore, Hannibal had taken Will to his bedroom.

They hadn’t had sex- though Will didn’t get the feeling it was because neither of them wanted to. Sharing skin and breath seemed more important. Will thinks of them lying hip to hip, chest to chest, separated only by thin cotton, and remembers knowing he’d never been closer to anyone, no matter how many times he’d had sex. They had lay and kissed and memorised one another’s faces until they could no longer keep their eyes open.

“Hey,” Will had finally slurred, when he was just on the cusp of a dream, “what _is_ your name?”

He thought he might have been asleep already, the pause was so long, but then a warm hand touched his waist. “My name is Hannibal Lecter.”

Now, sipping coffee, Will’s mind is full of questions about himself, about Hannibal, but none of them pertain to whether what he’s feeling is real. Will loved his wife, he knows that. He loved her in the way all real love easily happens, like sinking to the bottom of a warm river with pockets full of stones, glad of the water’s embrace. But he’d felt something else with her too, like being her husband became giving up parts of himself. He was a father, and a handyman, and a smiling extension of her, all without ever really meaning to be. He had his agency, he allowed for those things, and agreed to them, and smiled while he did it- but now he wonders if it was out of fear rather than out of honesty. Her parents had disliked him: no religion, no mother, no son of mine. Her son had come to dislike him, when he learned the truth about Will. Molly had been given no choice but to dislike him, too.

He thinks of Molly, and holding her hand, and the way they’d laughed all the time, even when they shouldn’t have, sometimes. And he thinks of when he didn’t want to laugh, or couldn’t, and how disappointed she would seem.

“I’ve had enough heartache, Will,” she said to him one night, while they lay curled together in the only space not occupied by the many foster dogs scattered on the covers, “I’m ready for laughter.”

“No more heartache,” Will had whispered, pressing a kiss to her forehead, “I promise.”

He had not been able to keep that promise. He’s still angry with himself for lying.

Grumbling at the thought, he rummages for his cellphone and dials the number Hannibal left him, listening to the ringer.

“Buongiorno, Will.”

“Good morning.” Smiling at the sound of his voice, Will rubs his eyes. “Where are you?”

“I’m just getting a few necessities. I was woefully low on supplies, and I didn’t want you to look in the fridge and discover it.”

“I’ll stay away from it until you get back,” Will grins, “when will that be?”

“Soon, Will. I have to swing by my work and pick up some books. Did you sleep well?”

“Like the dead,” Will answers honestly, “I haven’t slept that well in- I dunno, a while.”

“I’m very pleased. The coffee isn’t cold?”

“It’s perfect, thank you. You musn’t have left too long ago.”

“It’s just a quick excursion. Is there anything you need?”

“I could use a new deodorant.”

“I’m glad you said something before I did.” He can hear the tease in Hannibal’s clipped voice, and Will huffs a laugh. Something about being teased by him is entirely too rewarding.

“Do you mind if I grab a shower?”

“I’d love it if you did.”

Will laughs again. “I’m not enjoying this.”

“I am joking, of course. You smelled of nothing but sleep and sweetness.”

“It’s too late for that kind of talk now.”

“In that case, I shall have to show you how sincere I am when I come home.”

Will likes the sound of that. He likes the way Hannibal says ‘home’, like they’ve always been this way.

“Is this it now?” He asks aloud, wonderingly. “I just live here with you?”

“Unless you’d like to look for somewhere bigger once your divorce is finalised.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“That is the only thing that you need decide on. Nothing would make me happier than for you to stay with me. Or if you like, you can get your own apartment while we test the waters. I don’t think it’s necessary, though.”

“Even though it’s only been two weeks? You don’t think it’s too soon?”

“For anyone else, it might be. It isn’t for me. Is it for you?”

“No- but are you certain?”

“Tell me Will, are you certain?”

“Yes,” Will says immediately, because he knows he is, more than he knows anything else right now. There’s a silence, but Will thinks it’s because Hannibal is smiling.

“And so am I.”

Will just smiles at the far wall, and after a long moment, he sighs.

“Okay. I’ll hit the shower. When you come back, we can make breakfast?”

“Exactly what I had in mind. Feel free to start unpacking your things. There is plenty of room in the armoire for hanging items, and I’ve cleared you some drawers by the bed.”

“I’m not even sure when you found the time to do that. Are you sure that’s-”

“I’m sure. And I’m a very early riser,” Hannibal laughs, voice going lean with a heavy accent.

“Then I must be a very heavy sleeper.”

“You seemed exhausted last night. I wanted you to be well rested for today. Big changes take a lot of our energy, and you don’t seem to be good with changes, if you don’t mind my observation.”

“You’re right, of course.” Nodding, Will slides out of bed, stretching. “All right. I’ll see you in a bit.”                

“In a bit,” Hannibal confirms, and he rings off.

Will peeks his head into the en suite and finds clean towels, and he takes a few minutes to brush his teeth and unpack his soap bag before he starts the water. Hannibal keeps his toothbrush pot in the mirrored cabinet, along with a fancy silver razor that makes Will’s look like something a kid would pretend with. He can’t stop looking at his toothbrush sitting next to Hannibal’s in the marble pot, wondering if that’s too presumptuous.

 “You just said yes to living with him,” he reminds himself severely, “try not to be a baby.”

With that, he gets in the shower.

Even Hannibal’s shower gel smells like something Will can’t afford- and it doesn’t even smell that strong. Will uses it, just out of curiosity, and thinks of what he knows about Hannibal, just from this place. His steadfast solidarity feels strange. His home is set up for entertaining, from the piano in the living room, to the large, copper accented kitchen, but he emanates such a serious reclusivity that Will is surprised he wants him here at all. The aloofness, the fake name, the fake career- it all means something big, Will knows that. He knew Hannibal wasn’t Roman Fell from the first time he failed to look around at the name. What he doesn’t know, is why.

He thinks of how Hannibal had offered to play tour guide around Florence. Even that seems incongruous. He’s running away from something, possibly even _on_ the run. That doesn’t alarm Will, for some reason. Hannibal has an almost imperceptible slipperiness, like he can be anyone, at any time, and still be completely himself- and yet he doesn’t belong. Will sees that in him like he does in himself, inexplicable but just… there. Otherness.

He smiles grimly at the thought as he washes his hair. Maybe they can be Other together.

When he’s done, he gets out, gets dressed, and combs his hair. In the mirror, he looks young and transparently urgent for approval, so he scrubs it up again with his fingers. The door clicks, and Will heads to the kitchen where he finds Hannibal stocking the fridge and the wine rack.

“Give me your account details so I can give you some money for groceries,” Will says, as conversationally as he can when his ears are burning.

“Nonsense, it’s my pleasure, and unless the college you lecture at is extremely lenient, you’re unemployed.”

“Huh.” Will shrugs. “Guess I am. I can still pay for some food though.”

“I don’t wish to discuss it any further,” Hannibal says, politely but firmly, “I have uprooted you. The least I can do is feed you.”

Mentally calculating how to go about reimbursing Hannibal without a fight, Will just sighs.

“Stubborn, aren’t you?”

“I have a feeling I’m not the only one.” Hannibal gives him a knowing look over his shoulder, and Will laughs.

*

Will washes up after breakfast, being careful to be neat. The water is nearly scalding, and when the last plate is clean, he stands for a moment, just feeling the bright, travelling pain of it. He thinks of trying to reach the kettle as a child, to make his father a cup of tea before work. He’d been too short for the counter, and when he’d pulled, the kettle had tipped. They’d spent the night in the ER, and Will’s father had been landed with a bill for his trouble. Will still remembers that his disappointment had been more unbearable than the pain. It feels stark and real suddenly, standing with his stinging, bandaged hands while his father pinches the bridge of his nose and reads the invoice, prematurely greying hair shining in the firelight.

There’s a hand at his waist, and Will jerks as if awoken from a nightmare, spinning around to where Hannibal is waiting. His expression is thinly veiled concern. When Will gets his breath, he looks down, and his hands have saturated Hannibal’s linen shirt, his skin pink and mottled.

“It will dry, no harm done.” Hannibal tells him, and he takes Will gently by the elbows, turning him back to the sink and starting to run cold water into the other basin. “Here.”

Neither of them speak while Hannibal cools the skin on Will’s hands and forearms.  Will waits, mouth stretched and lower jaw set forward in a grimace.

“Can I ask a personal question?” Hannibal asks eventually.

“I suppose so.”

“Do you have a therapist?”

Will thinks about his answer.

“Sort of. I kind of stopped going. I shouldn’t have.”

“What was it that stopped you?”

Will pulls a face again.

“Shame, I suppose. Fear.”

“Fear of being known?”

“Fear of being misunderstood.”

Hannibal nods, and hands Will a towel to dry his hands. He touches his cheeks, tipping his face this way and that, examining the bruising around Will’s eye.

“I used to be a psychiatrist,” he admits, sounding guilty. Will feels his innards get icy.

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed. Nothing shameful about thinking differently than everybody else.”

“You sound like you practise saying that a lot.”

“In the mirror, every day.”

That makes Will look at him, surprised.

“Most psychiatrists turn to the profession because they think they can explore their own issues safely, Will. Surely that’s why you first became interested in the subject.”

“I suppose.”

Hannibal’s hand is relaxing on his cheek, his thumb stroking at the bone. Will leans into it, sighing.

“I have a lot of problems, Hannibal,” he tells him quietly, “I don’t know how much fun you’ll find me after a while.”

“Is that the experience you’ve had, or the impression I’ve given?” Hannibal quizzes. At Will’s answering silence, he continues. “Trust me, you will have to allow for a lot more of my idiosyncrasies than I will of yours, and I will not resent a single one of your own. You have my word.”

Mollified for now, Will leans his cheek against Hannibal’s shoulder, touch tentative. Last night seems so far away now, and Will thinks of receding tides of affection. He relaxes when Hannibal’s arms fold around his back, and wonders which of them is the moon.

“Thank you for washing up,” Hannibal adds, voice a low rush of breath.

“Thank you for breakfast,” Will murmurs. He feels Hannibal brush a soft kiss to the space behind his ear.

*

Will is struggling to believe the last forty-eight hours can really be his life. He’s with Hannibal sat on the balcony again with a glass of wine, following dinner. The sound of music is drifting from the Piazza della Signoria around the corner, droves of meandering tourists still visible on the bridges. The air smells of residual heat and the city, the light rosy as the dusk settles down on the skyline.

“Dinner was incredible,” he offers, as an excuse to look at Hannibal, instead of everything around them. He looks deeply satisfied with himself, eyes half closed with the width of his smile, making his face warm. He looks glorious, Will thinks, tanned against his white Henley and pale slacks, fair hair speckled with grey.

“It was made all the more so for your company,” he responds, and even though it’s a line, Will’s heart pounds.

“I like being here with you,” he murmurs. He loves the way Hannibal’s expression goes even more pleased.

“I like you being here with me, Will, very much.” He holds out his hand, and Will takes it without hesitating.

“I’m sorry about earlier.”

“Don’t be. I know who you are, Will, you don’t have to hide yourself from me. I don’t expect you to be outgoing, and light, and easy all the time. You’re not here to amuse me.”

“I thought maybe I could keep up the facade a little longer.”

“No need. I want you just the way you are.”

Without realising, they’ve both angled closer to one another. Will can’t help but smile, tilting his head.

“You don’t wish I were a little easier?”

“Perhaps a little easier,” Hannibal allows, his t’s soft. Will gets the feeling he’s not like this all the time; that this playfulness is something Will has brought out in him. It’s a pretty good feeling.

“I could try harder.”

“To be easier? Let me help you with that.”

His fingers sliding into Will’s hair, Hannibal guides their lips together in a kiss. It starts out calm, and then Will feels the swipe of Hannibal’s tongue against his lower lip, and all the fleeting embers of the day ignite in his core. He grips at Hannibal’s shirt, pressing in closer, and the table jumps precariously as one of them nudges it, startling them apart.

“Perhaps we should continue inside, for the sake of the crockery,” Hannibal muses. He doesn’t even wait for Will to nod before they’re both standing up, moving through to the bedroom on autopilot. They’re hindered only slightly by their inability to separate.

In the doorway, Hannibal strips Will out of his shirt like he did the night before, only now he steps back to look at him for a second. His fingers skim a bruise here, a small scar there, and he bites his lip. Will reaches, and Hannibal lets him pull his own shirt off, smiling as he undoes his own slacks, letting them drop to the ground.

“That _was_ easy,” Will marvels, voice light, pleased when it elicits a grin from Hannibal. He touches Hannibal’s chest, nails just scritching against hair and muscle, and he notices his gaze turn hungry at the contact; lets him draw him back in. This kiss is slower, but no less ablaze. Will steps back toward the mattress, and when his thighs hit the edge they both go down.

Hannibal strips Will’s belt out of the loops and starts on the buttons of his jeans, and Will feels fear but no hesitation, quashed by anticipation at the sight. He thinks Hannibal can tell, because he wastes no time in pulling them down, the hot smear of his mouth against the curve of Will’s hipbone as he goes.

It’s not a new sensation, but the rasp of stubble adds newness. Will touches at his shoulders bravely, working up to his hair, surprised at the softness.

“Hannibal,” he breathes, just to taste the word in this way. He’s turned on just from watching him, being touched by him. Hands sliding up his thighs, Hannibal lets his teeth scrape, and Will whines.

“May I?” Hannibal asks, fingertips folding into the waistband of his boxers. Will nods straight away, breaths starting to come out shakily. He’s surprised at the lack of flowery foreplay given Hannibal’s aesthetic preferences, but he’s not complaining.

And then he’s naked, Hannibal’s gaze openly admiring, touch so gentle. He doesn’t say anything, and Will thinks for a second he might be having second thoughts, but there’s a smile at the corner of his mouth despite the slight tremor to his fingers.

“Nervous?” He asks Will.

 _Projecting_ , Will thinks. “Yeah, always. Aren’t you?”

“Not usually,” Hannibal says, sounding a tad perturbed at the thought.

“Come here,” Will murmurs, leaning up to him. He tugs at the hems of Hannibal’s shorts. “Let me see you.” He takes Hannibal’s chin in his hands, angling him down for a kiss. “All right?”

“I’m fine.  I’m not usually so forthcoming with people.”

“Me neither. I think we’re both out of our comfort zones right now.”

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be, with you,” Hannibal assures.

“Me too, Hannibal,” smiling, Will accepts another long kiss, letting Hannibal melt down against him until their bodies feel like one. At some point, they navigate the removal of Hannibal’s boxers, and then there’s skin against skin and heat and Will can’t help the noise he makes. Hannibal rolls his hips experimentally, the drag of his cock against the underside of Will’s own, hot and thick, enough to make Will choke on another sound. He understands the mechanics, and he’s seen his fair share of porn during curious phases, but he still didn’t expect to be so affected by the feel and sight of Hannibal like this.

“Fuuck,” he utters, dissolving into more noises, their hips moving together and Hannibal lipping the words from his mouth like he’s drinking them down. He gets a hand back in Will’s hair, and all at once every touch is the press-part of the lips and the heat slick slide of their skin, every motion punctuated with a burst of breath and voice.

“You look- perfect like this-” Hannibal whispers.

“God, Hannibal, you too.” It’s so intimate to see him like this, Will thinks, frosted with sweat and shedding lust in the waning evening light. He’d almost have thought Hannibal above it if he’d been asked, but feeling his teeth on his throat and his hands gripping Will, the way he starts to roll his hips more urgently, it’s like knowing him all over again; knowing he’d be immune to it if he could, but he just can’t.

Will knows the feeling. He’s oversensitized just from this, panting hard. Cupping Hannibal’s shoulder blades, nails digging into the skin, he lets himself push up with his hips for more. When his knee slips up against Hannibal’s flank, Hannibal tucks a hand under the back of his thigh to secure him, pull him closer still.

“ _Oh_ …” and then the angle is perfect, the friction almost too much to bear.

Hannibal leans up on his elbows, sharp-looking teeth bared as he bucks. His eyes flicker closed, blonde lashes flickering, and the heat between Will’s hips pools fast and thick at the sight of him. “Wait, let me…” he squirms a hand between them, curling explorative fingers around the shaft of Hannibal’s cock and stroking. He’s gratified to feel slick against the heel of his palm.

“Will,” Hannibal rasps, visibly shuddering when Will lets his thumb whirl over the head experimentally.

“Okay?” He checks.

“Okay.” Hannibal tucks his face against his shoulder, and between them they find a rhythm of stroke and push that has him shaking inside minutes, knuckles tightening in Will’s hair.

The quiet thrill of power is better than anything Will had expected, and he gives a gentle squeeze to hear Hannibal gasp, getting braver. He’d anticipated awkwardness, shyness, clumsiness- and this is all of that, but there’s something else too, some bone deep synchronisation in the way Hannibal breathes and moves; starts to tense and fuck harder into the tight circle of Will’s fingers.

“Come for me,” Will breathes against his ear, pressing a kiss there, stroking faster, “you can have what you want from me.”

“What if I want everything?” Hannibal whispers against his cheek, voice half drunk with his accent.

“Then you can have everything,” Will promises, smile almost shy. That makes Hannibal grit, and gasp, and Will kisses him as he comes between their bellies in a hot spill, working it out of him until Hannibal lies against his hand to gently stop him.

He does nothing but breathe into Will’s neck for a moment, and Will strokes down his back, feeling scars and scrapes and the crescent marks from his own nails.

“You are exceptional,” Hannibal murmurs eventually, breath tickling Will’s neck. It makes Will laugh, a little breathless.

“I was shaking the whole time.”

“It added something, I’m sure.” He seems to be recovering now. Will takes in the creases at the corner of his eyes and the deep, almost red-brown of his irises. Hannibal levers himself up enough to kiss Will warmly, and then he shifts down the mattress between Will’s knees, nipping at the inside of his thigh.

“Oh- god, you don’t have to do that,” Will breathes, automatically turning crimson.

“I want to taste you,” Hannibal sounds completely matter of fact.

“Uh- well- okay.” His breath is stolen as Hannibal takes his cock into his mouth, just the head at first, fingers fanning around the root gently. “Ha-”

He sucks, fingers drawing upward. The heat of his mouth makes Will arch without meaning to, but Hannibal doesn’t pull back. Wrist working in a quick tipping motion, he concentrates the motions of his tongue, flicking the tip slow and then quick over the crown of Will’s cock. It’s just that at first, steady, almost teasing, but then he presses his other hand to the junction where thigh meets groin and lets his fingers tease over Will’s sack. His hand picks up pace, smearing spit and fluid, and he settles.

Will makes several short, urgent sounds as Hannibal’s mouth undoes him. He’s shaking with the tension he’s building, crawling heavily up his thighs to the pit of his stomach. It isn’t even close to the most proficient head he’s ever had, but the sight of Hannibal like this is enough to turn him to a creature of pure need: the pursed lips, the demure flutter of his eyelids, the obscene wet sounds of his mouth. He’s hitting every button Will has, and as soon as he starts to bob his chin in earnest Will can’t keep still, gripping at his hair and hanging on as his orgasm threatens at the corners of his vision.

Hannibal sucks him harder, fingers of both hands gently squeezing, and for a few long moments Will is perfectly suspended between ‘almost’ and ‘yes there’ before his breath breaks on a moan.

“Hannibal-” he warns, letting him pull back to stroke it out of him as Will gasps again. He floods over Hannibal’s fingers with a fractured, shuddering groan. When the spots clear from his vision, he sees Hannibal is looking at him, expression cat-like again.

“Will,” he sighs, leaning over him once more, settling against his chest. He touches at the stubble on his jaw. Will rolls his head back to cling onto the fog in his head a little longer.

“That was perfect,” he murmurs, truthfully.

“It was.”

“You’re perfect.”

“If only.”

Will can’t see him, but it sounds like Hannibal’s voice has taken on a measure of resignation.

“I think you are, right now,” he promises, “my first impressions are usually right.”

“What was your first impression of me?” Hannibal asks hesitantly.

“I thought you looked lonely,” Will mumbles, drowsy from sex. Hannibal is still stroking his skin, his hair. “You were beautiful in your loneliness though, like an oil painting of a memory. You looked like a man with a secret even you didn’t want to know.”

Hannibal considers for a moment.

“Suppose I am,” he muses.

“That’s okay,” Will assures. “You don’t have to tell me it, but if ever you think it will help you, you can, y’know.”

Silence now. Hannibal draws his fingers through Will’s curls, his breath warming Will’s neck.

“You care about people too much, don’t you, Will?” He asks eventually. “You find yourself understanding people very deeply whether you want to or not.”

Sighing at the thought, Will tips his body until they can tangle together in the sheets, his arms safely around Hannibal’s middle; under his neck.

“I want to understand you,” he breathes, “I think I already do.”

“And you want me anyway.” He sounds a bit wondering at that.

“Very much. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted- anything- so profoundly, or certainly.”

He opens his eyes a crack, and Hannibal is looking right at him, young for a moment in the lamp light.

“I feel the same,” he says simply. Pulling up the covers, he leans in to press a kiss to Will’s lips, and stays so close they exchange breath until they fall asleep.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal and Will share sweet moments, painful truths, and also there's shower sex. 
> 
> TW: Descriptions of struggles with mental illness and (minor character, canon typical) death throughout this chapter. There are several lovely bits too, though. I promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this fic is getting out of hand and will be more in depth than I had originally intended. You'll notice that a lot of points mirror the original plot of the Hannibal books and media, though I have incorporated some artistic liberties in order to modernize it. Additionally, we uncover some of Will's secrets here. This chapter deals with mental illness and death of loved ones, so heads up for that.

Hannibal can’t take his eyes off Will. He’s sleeping, the first blush of the dawn through the blinds casting stripes of shadow over his face. Reaching out hesitantly, Hannibal brushes the hair from his eyes, touched when Will shifts closer in his sleep.

In his mind, Hannibal has tossed over every motive he can think of, every scenario, where this is a trap. He feels as though he’s being led through the dark woods by the hand, but he doesn’t know whether it’s toward salvation or peril. He’d debated whether Will could be undercover, or have been contacted by the FBI since he arrived in Florence. He’d debated if he was a con artist, using pretty smiles and shy shrugs to line his pockets. Nothing seems more feasible than the most insane suggestion, which is that he is genuinely here because he wants to be; because he wants Hannibal.

Hannibal wants to be right. Will doesn't seem to have an inch of dishonesty about him- even when his mouth tries to lie, his eyes and body betray him so completely he gives up midsentence. Every part of him is vibrating nerves, seeking comfort. Sometimes he has nightmares, and when Hannibal wakes him, he’s sweat drenched and disoriented, burying his face in Hannibal’s chest and whispering blurred apologies into his skin. Hannibal has never once found himself to be angry, though the absence of that reaction strikes him as odd.

This morning, Will is peaceful in his rest. Hannibal had intended to get up, make breakfast, do some work, but he’s snared by this moment: the closest thing to normality he thinks he could ever have. He’s never wanted it before, but this is enough to make him see the appeal, watching the shadows slide over Will’s bare skin as the sun climbs higher.

Eventually, Hannibal dozes back to sleep, mesmerised, and he dreams of walking through dark corridors with numb feet and fingers until he’s woken by a press of lips to the column of his throat, Will’s warm hand on his ribs, calling him back.

“You slept late,” comes Will’s soft voice, “s’nice to wake up beside you.”

“In the daylight,” Hannibal agrees, allowing himself to scrunch closer to Will, stealing his warmth to chase away the memories of the cold. “I don’t have any immediate appointments today, I didn’t want to wake you.”

“’Appointments’, such a doctor,” Will mumbles, but Hannibal thinks it’s fond.

“Being a doctor is the only thing that ever made me genuinely proud of myself,” Hannibal muses aloud, “I always wanted to be the best I could. I suppose that’s why I was so angry when it didn’t work out.”

“You’re still a doctor now. Even Roman Fell is a doctor.”

Hannibal can’t quite differentiate what the edge in Will’s voice is. It might be amusement.

“You don’t like doctors, do you Will?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I never met a doctor I liked before I guess, but ah, you are the obvious exception.”

“I suppose I should make that a professional epitaph.”

“Doctor Lecter, the first of his name, Liked by Will Graham,” Will muses, “sounds about right.”

“I think it could be improved.” Hannibal opens his eyes to see Will smiling, all teeth and pillow lines.

“Which word did you object to in particular?” He teases.

“If I told you that I’d have to kill you.”

“I can’t believe our relationship has moved onto death threats.”

Watching Will crease in laughter is so familiar now, but Hannibal never gets tired of it. It feels like he’s known it all his life. He’s half convinced that Will has even made a home for himself in some of his memories. Sometimes it’s in ordinary ways- sat beside him in theatres or complaining about the décor at home- but recently in more intimate ones. He imagines he can remember Will in the basement of his Baltimore home, watching him from the shadows as Hannibal butchered men. That’s the normal he hungers for, at his core.

“I think our relationship has only just breached the horizon of its potential. For now, the water is smooth and clear. I suspect over time it will get deeper and wilder.”

“So romantic when you use poetic sailing metaphors, I know what you’re doing.”

That makes Hannibal chuckle.

“I think we are all guilty of adopting the interests of those we wish to share our lives with.”

“Hence the reason I pretended I knew what ‘ _culatello’_ was the other night.”

“I knew you didn’t know.” Hannibal can’t stop his grin stretching. “You pronounced it terribly to the waiter.”

“Points for effort though, right?”

“Points just for turning up, Will.”

He’s smiling too, looking giddy and boyish. Hannibal finds himself almost embarrassed at how self-indulgent it feels to be like this with him, hidden away from the world.

“Come here,” he whispers, and Will rolls on top of him with a grin.

*

They go for coffee at a tiny gelateria that Will chooses because it’s quiet, and Hannibal adjusts his slacks at the knees as he sits down, putting his hat down on the plastic bench beside him and trying not to grimace. He watches Will at the counter, ordering in horrible Italian, and admires his dedication. When he comes over with their coffees, he’s grinning sort of uncertainly again, like he’s never had much cause to before.

“I ordered ice cream, too. I got you pistachio and amaretto.”

“I’m hesitant to believe you, you almost definitely asked for salt instead of sugar.”

“She knew what I meant. I’m only going off what you’ve taught me, Doctor.” Will quirks an eyebrow at him and goes to claim their ice cream from the counter. It occurs to Hannibal that the reason he’s so bemused by the simplicity of Will’s gesture is because he’s very seldom socialised without there being some kind of agenda, be it his own or someone else’s. He’s not on guard with Will, and the motives for his buying him ice cream- whether Hannibal wanted it or not- are completely unambiguous: he wanted to give him something.

The novelty of the warmth in Hannibal’s cheeks is glorious. The ice cream is average, but Hannibal still savours everything about this moment.

“What’re you grinning at?” Will asks, nudging their knees under the little formica table. Hannibal honestly daren’t look at it.

“The act of feeding the people we love is one of our most intimate instincts. Nurturing becomes our priority, that and winning favour.”

“Winning favour is generally altruistic- animals that provide food want to breed, animals that want to be provided for allow breeding.”

“I fed you first,” Hannibal points out, “I don’t know how far we’ll get with breeding, though.”

“No harm in trying,” Will says, sipping his coffee innocently, eyebrows raised.

Hannibal chokes on his mediocre ice cream.

*

They walk through the quiet evening streets, hand in hand, and Will squeezes Hannibal’s fingers to get his attention.

“I’ve noticed there are a lot of boats on the Arno.”

“You’ve been here over a month and nothing is getting past you.”

“Hannibal.” Will snickers. “I mean- my dad taught me how to repair boat motors, tar helms, that kind of thing. I was an apprentice diesel mechanic for a while in high school. I’ve repaired boats all my life, and I guess I don’t have to speak a lot of Italian to fix a boat motor. Do you think I could find a boat yard up the river and ask about work?”

“I don’t see why not.” Hannibal thinks about it, and then he thinks about Will working in the sun by the dazzling water, and he hums. “We should look into it.”

“All right.”

They turn into the local grocers, a Pegna that Hannibal can just about stoop to. He generally prefers a more specialised delicatessen, but Will has suggested that just a moderately expensive store might do for some things, and Hannibal gets the distinct impression he is uncomfortable with Hannibal doing the brunt of the buying. The place smells strongly of cured meat, the aisles lit up yellow. Hannibal raises his eyebrows but says nothing: Will’s comfort is quickly becoming more important than his own.

“Do we need coffee?” Will picks up a bag of beans.

“And milk. I’ll go.” He heads toward the cool aisle. At least Will hadn’t suggested instant.

He returns with cream too, and Will has added other things to the basket, bread and chocolate and eggs. Hannibal tries to recall the last time he went grocery shopping with anyone and comes up empty. It’s another glimpse at the life Will must have led, before this, before them.

“What was your wife like?” Hannibal asks, easily accepting one of the brown paper bags Will hands over after they’ve paid. Will flinches a bit at the question.

“Molly? She was lots of things. She grew up in Florida, had a very relaxed outlook on life.”

“How did you meet?”

Will flashes him a grin. “I fixed her boat.”

“You said she had a son.”

“Yes, Walter. He was shy, read a lot, we got on okay.”

“Is this subject bothering you?” There’s a lack of easiness in Will’s gait now, like he’s seen something he’s been trying to forget.

“I just have a headache. You can ask me anything you like, Hannibal.”

He sounds sure, irrespective of his discomfort. Hannibal thinks the feeling he gets when he looks at Will is transforming rapidly from something simple to something pure.

“You loved her.”

“Of course. I married her.”

“Did she know you?”

That makes Will pause. He looks at Hannibal, hugging his grocery bag.

“Do you know me?”

“I know plenty, though I admit some is speculation. You act like a guilty man when you talk about her. Were you unfaithful?”

Will bares his teeth again in that mirthless grin. “I was never the type. Sometimes one relationship is too much.”

“You let her down then.”

“Yes, I let her down.”

“How?”

“In lots of ways, small at first.”

“What was the last way?”

“I- why are you interrogating me in the street about this?” Will’s brows go up, his eyes on the floor. His voice is forcedly calm.

“I see the habits you struggle to shake and it reminds me that you haven’t always been here with me. I suppose I am trying to bleed the wound.”

“You’re a doctor, you should know bleeding wounds is the worst thing you can do for them.”

Hannibal waits. Despite the hostility, he knows Will meant it when he said Hannibal could ask anything. After a beat of silence, he sees him huff.

“I hadn’t told her something about my past. It was the kind of thing you tell your wife.”

Hannibal waits again. Will’s ears are going red.

“Can we go inside first?”

Nodding, Hannibal watches him walk ahead, following him close behind into their apartment building.

Once inside, Will starts to unpack the groceries hastily, and Hannibal lets him move around the kitchen unassisted; work out his nervous energy.

“My father died when I was finishing my degree,” Will throws it out like he’s ripping off a bandaid. “I majored in criminal psychology. I was going to go on to do a Doctoral in forensic science.”

“You didn’t?”

“I didn’t. I hadn’t spoken to my dad for a while- we didn’t get on when I got older.”

“You grew to resent him.”

“I guess. He didn’t like that I wanted to live in one place for more than a year. I didn’t like that he wouldn’t admit that had fucked me up.”

“You found him.”

“Yeah. I’d been scheduled to meet him, it was his birthday. I hadn’t heard from him, but I figured he was on a bender, I dunno. Anyway, I drove up, found him face down on the table. He’d been there for days. No one had noticed.”

“What was the cause of death?”

“Organ failure. He’d been sick for weeks, but he couldn’t afford the hospital, I guess, or he didn’t want to stop drinking.”

Hannibal imagines Will finding his father’s solitary, frail form, skin yellowed and cheeks hollow.

“You’d seen bodies before, surely, studying criminal psychology.”

“Yes, but never in situ- sure, photos, I dunno. I’d never seen him still before. He looked like he’d run out of batteries. He was like an object, not a person. At the time I figured I was in shock, I guess. I sat down, and I looked at him, and I thought about them putting him in one of those bags. It just seemed wrong.”

He’s stopped his pacing now, and he stands with his face to the window over the sink, still holding dish soap. Hannibal reaches gently for his arm, and Will jumps like he did that first time, when Hannibal had found him scalding himself.

“I called the cops eventually. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, though. It was sort of an insidious madness. It crept up inside me, turned all the lights on in my brain at night when I wanted to sleep. I couldn’t for months. I couldn’t eat, or concentrate, or think right. God, if I remembered to get a shower or wash my clothes it was a good day. I flunked out of my Doctoral program and lost my job.

One day, I realised he was sitting beside me on the couch, talking to me. He looked dead. I knew he was dead. But we talked like he wasn’t dead, his voice sounded crisp and real. He was angry with me for not realising sooner that something was wrong.”

Hannibal becomes aware that Will is shaking. He puts his hands on his shoulders to ground him.

“You had a breakdown.”

Will nods.

“Did you get help?”

“I spent twelve weeks in a psychiatric ward, drawing infinity with crayons.”

“Madness is an infectious disease. Often in spaces designed to help patients, things can get much worse.”

“That’s what they told me. I seemed to magnify it.”

Hannibal thinks how Will absorbs atmospheres like a sponge. It sounds about right.

Will continues. “Once I started individual therapy and taking sleeping pills, I levelled out. Not being with the others helped.”

“And after that?”

“I got my job. I shouldn’t have, really, but one of the professors who lectured me at college put in a good word. I’ve been fine ever since. More or less.”

Something tugs in Hannibal’s gut like a fish hook, and he folds his arms around Will’s middle, pressing his nose into the nape of his neck. He smells sweet, of Hannibal’s soap, the deodorant he bought him.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“I guess it puts us on a more even footing than Molly and I.”

“That isn’t why I’m thanking you.”

Taking a shaky breath, Will covers Hannibal’s hands with his own. “I know. Thank you for asking me.”

They stand like that, chest to back, until Will’s shakes slow. Hannibal kisses the side of his neck and smiles at the little shiver it elicits.

“Let’s go to bed.”

*

Composition is tricky today. Hannibal is finding it difficult to concentrate on the sounds he hears before he drops a key on the harpsichord, stopping periodically to glance instead at where Will is dismantling a boat engine on a tarp on the balcony, arms bared to the sun and his chest damp with sweat. He’d finally mastered the Italian Hannibal taught him well enough to get some as-and-when repair work, and Hannibal has not been able to thwart his contentment by complaining about the smell of motor oil.

“Don’t stop,” Will calls, voice rough with effort, “I like hearing you play.”

“I’m having difficulty with it today.” Hannibal doesn’t have to look to know the expression Will is wearing: the dubious smile.

“You never find anything difficult.”

“Except you,” Hannibal grouses, without heat.

“Play something you know, if you’re struggling,” Will suggests. He wrangles a screw into position, turning the propeller with his hand to test the spin.

Considering, Hannibal lets his fingers start to move of their own accord. The tune that comes out is light, and sweet, and a tad mournful. It has a hesitance that moves it forward as much as it slows it down. Letting his eyes drift closed, Hannibal sighs. He sees sunlight in soft streams, and the long dark fall of hair; elegant hands moving over the keys. The air smells of jasmine tea, and the damp perfume of orchids.

A weight settles beside him on the bench, and Will starts to play a few accompanying chords.

“You better have washed your hands,” Hannibal tells him.

“Of course. I’m house broken.”

“Are there no end to the surprises inside you?”

“You should be so lucky.” Will smiles, picking out a few higher notes, their hands overlapping on the keys. He plays proficiently, but rustily. “My mom asked that my dad make sure I could play an instrument, and he hated guitars.”

“How did you find a consistent teacher, with all the moving?”

“We didn’t. At one of the less terrible neighbourhoods we lived in, the lady next door offered lessons for a few dollars. She was retired and just wanted the company, I think. We lived there eighteen months, longer than the usual six.”

“You learned to play Aria in eighteen months?”

“No. I kept practising after we moved. The middle school I went to had a music block, and when my dad was working late, I’d practise there. I lost interest when I went to high school; picked it back up in college, mostly to impress girls I guess.”

“Did it work?”

“Sometimes,” Will chuckles, “who taught you?”

“My aunt. Murasaki. She was a very talented woman.”

“Well, she made you a very talented young man.”

“I’ve not been called a young man for a long time.”

“Neither have I. We can be old men together.”

Will stops playing, just leaning into Hannibal, their backs warmed by the afternoon sun where they sit side by side. The chemical scent of engine grease can’t quite hide the hint of sweat at the nape of Will's neck. Hannibal leans back into the contact, letting his nose linger under Will’s ear.

“You need a shower, if you’re finished with work for the night.”

“All right.” Will stretches a bit, standing up, holding his hand out for Hannibal. He takes it, letting Will guide him toward the bathroom, pausing in the doorway to kiss the salt from his lips.

They wind together in the shower, lazily touching and arching. It still feels new, but with a growing familiarity too, an organic development rather than a forced one.

Will kisses from his lips to the underside of Hannibal’s jaw, fingers dragging down his chest. When Hannibal’s eyes open, Will is going carefully to his knees, cupping Hannibal’s hips. Watching his eyes moving over his body makes Hannibal’s nerves sing with some inexplicably primal delight. Will swallows him into his mouth and takes him from barely affected to aching with a few long sucks, dark lashes fanned against his cheeks, hair slicked back. He pulls back to work his tongue against the slit, startling a gasp out of him, and he flashes Hannibal a grin before he tugs him back into the slick heat of his throat.

Panting, Hannibal knots his hands into his hair, letting his hips move with Will’s guiding motions until he’s straining for more. He looks young and filthy in this moment, chest and shoulders flushed and his cock hard where he’s knelt. The sight is enough to elicit another noise from Hannibal, and like he knows what he’s thinking, Will lifts a hand to stroke himself while he sucks. Hannibal can feel the slick of his mouth keeping pace with his hand. He breathes his name, over and over, softly at first and growing in urgency as Will’s motions increase in speed, pressure. Hannibal can feel him humming, see his hips arching into the clench of his fingers as he visibly edges closer. Even under the running water, the scent of sex is overwhelming. Hannibal fights to keep his eyes open as Will drags the orgasm out of him, fierce enough to make him stumble back against the wall, catching himself with his hands.

Then he drops down too, still shivering with the aftermath, both his hands closing over Will’s.

“Oh, god, Hannibal-”

It’s clumsy at first, and then they find a rhythm. They stroke Will together until he comes, the glistening, flush head of his cock sliding fast between Hannibal’s fingers. His jaw drops, the breath choked out of him. Hannibal doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so exquisite.

*

Hannibal dreams of snow again. A small, cold hand holds his, a soft and hollow voice.

“Hannibal.”

He wants to say something, but the fear grips his throat and makes him mute. His feet are bare on the wooden floors, and he can hear the crackle of a fire.

Snow flurries in between the beams on the ceiling, their breath fogging cold. Hannibal hears footsteps, and that small voice again.

“Hannibal?”

He opens his eyes, and Will’s hand is gently rubbing his chest.

“You were dreaming,” he murmurs, eyes wide with concern, glinting in the dark. Hannibal looks around the room, almost reacquainting himself with the present again.

“Thank you for waking me.”

“What were you dreaming of?” Will asks, softly. Hannibal looks at him, surprised. “You were frowning, and shivering. You don’t have to tell me.”

Hannibal thinks about it for a long time, and the expression on Will’s face stays the same, hopeful and reassuring. His hand still strokes down Hannibal’s flank. In the dark, with soft sheets and Will’s legs tangled with his, his fear is ebbing. He thinks of Will confessing to him in the kitchen, his shaking hands, and he sighs.

“I spent several years of my boyhood in an orphanage before leaving with my Uncle Robert,” he says eventually, surprised at how easily the truth slips out, “it was always cold, and I didn’t speak for most of the time I was there. I was a very isolated young man.”

He waits for the next question. Will’s eyes have gone wide and sad, the ocean grey of his irises pale in the nicks of city light sneaking through the slats in the blinds.

“That was in Lithuania?”

Hannibal nods. Will’s arm folds gently across his back, drawing him closer, and the warmth of his skin keeps Hannibal back from the snow flurrying across his mind.

“You don’t have to tell me this.”

“I find myself wanting to.”

“You’re sure?”

Hannibal takes a moment, and then nods. It’s the third time he’s told the story in his entire life. He thinks this time, he might tell the entire truth.

“The winter before I was orphaned, our home was attacked by looters. It was one of the coldest winters we had seen for some time, people in the local villages were starving, and our parents were wealthy enough to have stores of food. We escaped and took refuge in a lodge my father had built on the property for hunting and fishing, but they came after us. They killed our parents immediately- my mother had taken all her jewellery from the house, and they wanted anything valuable. The conditions were worsening outside and so my sister and I became their captives.”

“How old were you?”

“I can’t quite remember. My sister was very small, three or four, so I must have been eight. I try to think she didn’t know what was going on- she couldn’t understand where our parents were.”

Will’s eyes are shining. Hannibal wonders if he can see the snow now, too.

“We became trapped in the cabin by the blizzards outside. The looters who had come to the cabin were paranoid they would be shot on sight by police for the murder of my parents, who had been relatively well liked. We were in the cabin for several days before they started talking about eating us. I tried to stop them from taking her, but one of them broke my arm and I was weak, already traumatised.”

Will takes a sharp breath. When Hannibal looks up at him, he can see tears clinging to his lashes, gathering at the corners of his eyes. He swallows and tries to wipe them away, but Hannibal catches his hand, just watching for a moment. He doesn’t think anyone has ever cried for him. Even his aunt, Murasaki, even the first psychiatrist he told.

“You weren’t weak, Hannibal,” he murmurs, “you were a boy.”

Hannibal can’t even speak. Suddenly his throat is tight. He had the mind of a child then, he hadn’t understood anything except fear. The years of nightmares had impounded the guilt, made it conscious and real until it devoured him- and then it transformed, and became a bloodlust; a God to whom he sacrificed his enemies.

He can’t bring himself to be explicit about what happened to Mischa, and Will doesn’t ask him to clarify, but he looks haunted. It’s not an expression Hannibal could have anticipated, the way he so openly emanates hurt for him. Pure empathy.

“Can you see it, Will?” Hannibal whispers. Will nods, trembling, pushing his face into Hannibal’s neck. They constrict closer, holding and being held. Hannibal tips his cheek against Will’s and lets out a shaking sigh. He wants to tell him everything, he realises then. “When it became time for them to leave, they set the cabin on fire and left me chained there. I can’t really remember how I escaped, just that I was colder than I’d ever felt before. I was discovered by scavengers and taken to an orphanage. I stayed there until my Uncle Robert came to find me. He was a good man, and his wife, Murasaki, became very dear to me.”

Will leans back to look at him, still shaken. He strokes tentative fingers through Hannibal’s hair.

“What happened to the men who escaped? Were they caught?”

Hannibal hesitates. Will bites his lip.

“Did _you_ catch them?”

Again, Hannibal finds himself telling the truth with very little hesitance. He nods, expecting Will to shrink back, but he doesn’t even falter, still touching the silver at Hannibal’s temples.

“I killed them,” Hannibal breathes, “as soon as I was strong enough.”

Will props himself up on an elbow, looking down at him. Every flicker of his face is maddening in the half dark, minute twitches of understanding, emotion. Still, his fingers slide through Hannibal’s hair, and then curl forward against his palm so he can caress the cut of Hannibal’s cheek. His hands are shaky as ever, but his eyes are calm. He doesn’t speak, but Hannibal thinks he knows what he’s thinking.

Will bends low to kiss him, and Hannibal receives it with gratitude. When they pull apart, Will wipes his eyes again.

“I think you and I are going to be bad for each other.”

“I think we’re going to be good for each other.”

“Maybe we can be both.”

Hannibal nods, fingertips travelling down Will’s flank, feeling every muscle and rib.

“Maybe we can.”

“Think you can sleep again?” Will asks. With his hands on him, and the taste of him lingering on his lips, Hannibal thinks he can.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your encouragement and for sticking with my update speed. Feel free to drop me a prompt or chat to me about Hannibal at my tumblr: 
> 
> https://gleamingandwholeanddeadly.tumblr.com/ask
> 
> xo


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Hannibal's discussions circle subjects of truth, lies, and identity. Will deals with his feelings on the past, the future, and everything in between. Hannibal suggests a dinner party.
> 
> TW: Contains frank discussions of death, mental illness, and questionable psychological terms.

Hannibal is making breakfast when Will goes into the kitchen, wearing a pair of fine cotton pyjama pants and a light robe that gapes at the chest. Will goes to him for a sleepy morning kiss, letting his fingertips tickle at the window of bronze skin on Hannibal’s chest.

“You even look like a gentleman in your pyjamas, what’s with that?” He murmurs. Hannibal gives him an indulgent smile.

“And you look like a dream.”

Will shakes his head in disbelief.

“Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?”

“Professional and personal. I could publish journals on it.”

Will laughs and goes to grind some coffee, getting two cups from the fancy stand that Hannibal pretends not to be precious about.

“You don’t have to keep laying it on y’know. I’m here. I’m not going.”

“Not even after last night?”

“A thousand per cent not after last night, Hannibal.” Will turns to look at him. “When I first met you, I could see that you were different. I knew that you lived outside of the lines everyone else does. That’s what I liked about you.” He levers some of the ground beans into a filter and slams it gently into the machine, switching it on to drown out the silence behind him. Hannibal’s eyes feel like the caress of beating wings.

When he slides him his coffee, Hannibal catches his hand gently. 

“You are an extraordinary boy, Will,” he tells him. Will grimaces; can’t help the blush that bleeds across the bridge of his nose. He turns his hand into Hannibal’s and zippers their fingers.

“I am not in the business of persecuting people for their pasts, Hannibal, plenty of people wouldn’t have been brave enough to do what you did for Mischa.”

Hannibal’s eyes are soft and hopeful, and in the warm morning glow, Will can see his irises flecked with mahogany red.

“What if my past is who I truly am?” He murmurs. There is a secret question beneath it, Will isn’t a fool. He thinks he hears the swish of a falling knife.

“Then…”  Will shrugs, trying for nonchalant, “I’ll love you for your past, too. At least I’ll do my best. Like you will me.”

“There is nothing wrong with your past-”

“And I don’t blame you for yours,” Will interrupts, gently. They’re so close now that the air between them feels hot, their noses almost touching. Hannibal’s hands are twin stars of pressure on his wrists. He leans in, their foreheads touching, and Will lets his eyes slip closed and kisses him.

It’s a vulnerability like he’s never felt before, kissing Hannibal. He’s still getting to grips with how it could have come to this so soon: Hannibal took residence in his chest as easily as a knife sliding between his ribs. He can feel him there now, nestled amongst the sinew and gristle, even as the honey-eyed ghost of him kisses Will in the kitchen.

The real Hannibal, Will knows, only appears when offered a sacrifice.

He’s flayed Will open with his eyes enough times that Will can finally make sense of that. Like gold to the ferryman on the River Styx, only a bloodslick, horrifying truth will satisfy Hannibal’s definition of intimacy. Will doesn’t know if this will always be the case, but he knows for now he’s willing to dig them out. It doesn’t even hurt too much, with him.

“Breakfast will burn,” Hannibal breathes, and Will reluctantly steps back.

 

*

 

Will finds himself thinking of his father while he works. They have the same hands, he sees it more and more as he ages, and the sight of them covered in oil and working chains and screws is so familiar that Will sometimes feels overwhelmed by it.

The sun beats on his back where he’s sat with his knees either side of the outboard motor, the buoyancy of the water gently rocking the speed boat from side to side. He’s worried once or twice that he’ll drop something in the water, but so far, his hands- his father’s hands- have been steady. It’s a simple but time-consuming fix, and while his hands work his mind is free to roam, soothed by the rhythm.

He remembers being so hungry his stomach hurt; so cold they’d burned half their furniture when the gas cut off. Will’s dad had been laid off when his drinking got bad, and then he was reluctantly sober while he looked for work. The day he’d found it, Will’s dad didn’t come home, and there was a terrifying winter night where Will had curled up in the armchair by the pitiful fire to wait, and wait, and wait. He’d been half convinced he’d fallen off the wagon, or had some kind of accident. He’d awoken early the next morning, to the sound of the door, and his dad was carrying groceries after pulling a night shift for double pay.

“I got you some of those waffles you like,” he’d said, “put on some coffee, Will.”

That morning had been one of the better ones. Will hadn’t been old enough to be critical yet, still grateful just for those rare turn arounds. They built a fire with wood from the gas station and Will made breakfast while his dad dozed in the chair Will had vacated. As he looked out of the window, Will could see snow starting to fall on the frost-bitten ground, glinting in the morning light. In their little two bedroom shack, where the walls shone hot orange from the light of the fire, Will had felt safe.

When Will had gently roused him with coffee and eggs,  he’d given him a small ring box, too.

“I wanted to get you something for your birthday,” Will said, helplessly, “but I didn’t want to waste the money. I made it…”

His dad opened the box, and took out the lure, made neat and pretty with a few bright beads and feathers Will had collected on their travels.

“You’re a good boy, Will,” his father said, his face creased with exhaustion, “don’t you worry, you do right by me.”

Something splashes, and Will swears he sees his breath puff out in a cloud of mist as he looks around, blinded by the sunshine for a moment. On the jetty, there’s a figure, face hidden by the brim of his hat.

“But you didn’t always do right by me, did you, boy?” It says, in Will’s father’s voice. Will jolts and grabs at the lip of the stern when the motion makes the boat sway. He breathes hard for a few minutes, turning his face away from his father.

“Will.”

“Stop it,” he mutters.

“Will!”

This voice sounds different. Will dares a glance, and he sees Hannibal in his father’s place, the brim of his hat pulled low. He’s in one of the pale suits he usually wears for work, eyes hidden by round polaroid sunglasses. His mouth is a straight, anxious line.

“Hannibal?”

“I thought you’d be nearly done. It’s getting late. You look like you’ve caught the sun.”

There are several unspoken things in those short sentences: more secret questions. Will had thought it was mid-afternoon at the latest; he wonders how long he’s been sat staring into the past. The skin on his arms, he notices, is looking burnt.

He looks at his hands, then, the engine. They seem to have continued without him, and now when he guns the throttle, the outboard sputters to life. He kills it again, and goes about reattaching it to the transom.

“I’ll just be a minute.”

“Take your time.”

Hannibal offers a hand when Will has cleaned up, supporting both his arms as he steps up onto the jetty. He looks tired, Will thinks, which is weird because they’ve been getting plenty of sleep.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, I had a bit of a conflict at work, but it was easily resolved.”

“What was the conflict?”

“It has been suggested by some of my peers that I might be suitable for the position of Curator at the Palazzo Capponi museum, not all of them agree.”

“What’s to be done about that?”

“I think he would like me to prove myself. I am more than happy to do so. I have agreed to prepare a lecture to establish my suitability for the role. I thought I might host a dinner party, too, to make things a little less formal.”

“A dinner party.”

“Yes, would that be all right with you?”

“Of course it would.” He doesn’t know why Hannibal thinks he has to ask his permission.

“Would you be with me?”

“At the dinner party?”

“Yes, by my side.”

That makes him pause. He’s not great at dinner parties, but he sees that Hannibal’s interest lies in a different outcome to his ability to entertain.

“You want to use it as an opportunity to uh, come out?”

“As it were, I suppose. More to introduce you to my peers.”

Will thinks about that, too. It doesn’t really bother him, though the thought of Hannibal being disappointed in him does, slightly.

“I’m not great at parties, but I’ll be there.”

“I wouldn’t want for you to put yourself in a position of discomfort.”

“I won’t be uncomfortable if you’re there. I promise.”

Hannibal nods, and he’s still holding onto Will gently.

“All right.”

“Okay.”

“What about you, Will?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what happened when you saw me on the dock? I stood and watched you for a good few minutes. You didn’t seem to notice me at all, and when you did, you seemed afraid.”

Will swallows. They don’t let go of one another’s hands.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Will promises. He leans into the solid warmth of Hannibal’s body, sighing in relief when his arms fold around his back. “Sorry if I scared you, I was lost in thought.”

The thought of Hannibal being scared is an odd one, but he doesn’t correct him.

“What thought had snared you?”

“Just the past. Remembering gets a little heady sometimes.”

“All right. Are you ready to go home? I bought dinner.”

“Yeah, of course. Give me one of the bags.”

They start to amble back up the steps to the sidewalk, Hannibal still gripping Will’s hand like he’s afraid he’ll float away if he lets go. They fall into step once they’re level, starting to walk back toward the bridges.

“It seems you and I share the trait of an eidetic memory,” Hannibal says eventually. Will looks at his weathered, tanned cheeks and the creases of his eyes behind his sunglasses. He wonders for a moment if Hannibal is real: something about his similarities to Will raise alarm bells inside him, like he’s the imaginary friend Will invented as a child to play the games the other children wouldn’t understand.

“We do?”

“Yes, I had always wondered it about myself, but my studies in psychiatry confirmed it. There are, as always, different concentrations, triggers and presentations for everyone. I am able to walk backward into my memories, yours seem to jump out of your head and swallow you.”

“Yeah, they sometimes get away from me.”

“It has taken me a long time for that no longer to be the case. It was all too easy as a young man to live in my past.”

“Funny, isn’t it? I prefer my present, but the past isn’t done with me yet.”

“I think that’s the nature of guilt. It tethers us to things we would rather forget.”

Will squeezes his hand.

“I thought I saw my father.”

“When you looked at me?”

“Yeah.” Will’s face burns a bit, and he scowls at the implication. “Not- you don’t resemble him or anything, I had just been thinking and I guess I left my foot in the door.”

“Interesting.”

“I suppose.”

As they walk, Hannibal bumps gently against him, nose brushing his ear, his jaw. Will shivers.

“Are you smelling me?”

“I was trying to work out if the smell is you or the groceries.”

It sounds like a lie, but Will lets it slide.

“I’ll get a shower when I get in, sorry, it’s been hot today.”

“It’s not a criticism. I had to change my shirt too. It’s been unusually humid.”

“I guess that’s global warming for you.”

“I’ll take it over Lithuanian winters, in any case.”

“Me too.” Will shifts the grocery bag more securely in his arm. He notices the brown bag has PEGNA printed on it in green ink.

 

*

 

Showered and seated at the dining room table, Will checks his emails on his tablet while Hannibal plates up dinner. He’d sort of assumed no one would miss him if he disappeared, and that seems to be more or less the case, but there’s a short email from his lawyer detailing the finalisation of his divorce and the division of his and Molly’s assets. He’s attached the papers to be printed, signed and posted back.

“Hey, looks like I might have tied up all my loose ends in the next few days- oh, thank you,” he smiles at Hannibal as he comes to set a plate down for him at the table, taking the seat opposite. They’ve only discussed Will’s disappearance loosely, and they both seem to have silently agreed that it can’t officially happen just yet: things have to draw to a close of their own accord, not abruptly. “My lawyer has sent through the finalisation papers. Just gotta print them and sign them.”

“I have a printer in the study, you may use it. I could post them on my way to work tomorrow- unless you need a couple of days to look over them.”

Will is still stunned by the idea of Hannibal using something as pedestrian as a printer. He always looks as though he should be surrounded by finery, not wrestling with a recalcitrant Canon.

“Thanks, that would be perfect. Though I don’t mind posting them?”

Hannibal pours them some wine, swilling the glass and scenting his before he takes a sip. The bouquet, Will thinks it’s called. He just sniffs his before he takes a sip. Smells like wine.

“It would be my pleasure; besides, you don’t know how the postal system works.”

“You’re right.” Will smiles, covering Hannibal’s hand with his own gently. “Thank you.”

“I’m just trying to avoid the clerk having to listen to any more of your Italian,” Hannibal says pertly, and Will snickers around the rim of his wine glass.

“It’s been what, ten weeks? Give me a break, we didn’t all speak three languages by the age of thirteen. It’s harder to learn once you’re over thirty.”

“Even if that were true, it still doesn’t apply to you, does it Will?” Hannibal asks.

“What do you mean?”

“You give an impression of deference to my intelligence, but I have never once witnessed you misunderstand me, or be ignorant of any aspect of my work.”

“Well.” Will’s face heats up a bit. “I obviously read a lot about Florence before I came here, and psychology was already my field of study.”

Hannibal looks unconvinced.

“That is not entirely what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean, Hannibal?”

“I only mean that I’m not sure why you give the impression that you are an average minded person, with average interests and an average past, when getting to know you eradicates that assumption day by day.”

“It’s on me that you assumed I was boring and uneducated?”

It’s not fair of Will to say it, because that isn’t what Hannibal is angling at, and Will knows, but having holes poked in his defences by sheer observation is leaving him feeling barbed and feral.

Visibly perplexed by the turn in the conversation, Hannibal gives Will a long, patient look, and then takes another sip of his wine.

“I assumed no such thing,” he goes back to his dinner, looking like he regrets bringing it up, “I apologise if I have insulted you, I had no intention of doing so. I am merely struggling to reconcile the man you are with the man you would have me believe you are.”

“I don’t think either of us is innocent of being exactly who we said we were when we first met,” Will allows, but he doesn’t buy Hannibal’s flaccid apology, “are you trying to find out if I’m struggling to reconcile the versions I see of you by telling me you’re struggling?”

Hannibal’s nostrils flare, just slightly, a sure sign of irritation. Looks like he doesn’t like having holes poked either.

“Are you?”

“No, but I’m struggling with the fact that you don’t trust my first answer.” That is at least the truth. The image of Hannibal as a young man, bathed in blood, doesn’t terrify him. It intrigues him. It sits unexamined in the back of Will’s mind, like an unexplained noise in the dark at night. Part of Will believes he’s always felt it, since he spotted him in the museum. It’s a shadow crawling up the wall behind him in the candlelight, a thing of pure revenge.

There’s a terse silence. Finally, Will sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have got so defensive.”

“I shouldn’t have pushed,” Hannibal admits, voice low and even, “my admittedly clumsy foil was not entirely a lie though- sometimes I’m not entirely sure you are who you would normally be around me.”

“Well I’m- I’m just used to being a certain way with people who don’t know me that well...” He intercepts Hannibal’s almost-hurt expression. “I want you to know me. You know me better than most people. It just takes me a long time to… relax.”

Lips forming a moue of reluctant placation, Hannibal nods.

“All right.” 

Silence settles over the room, and Will thinks this is possibly the first time he’s struggled to have a conversation with Hannibal. Usually, they back and forth so easily.

“Dinner is fantastic,” he offers, and watches the corner of Hannibal’s mouth curve.

“Thank you, Will.” He dabs at his mouth with a napkin. His hands are clean and fingers long and squared. Will is so busy staring at them he doesn’t hear Hannibal’s question.

“Hm? Sorry?”

“I asked if you needed more time to read over your paperwork, or if you wanted me to show you to the study after dinner,” Hannibal repeats.

“Oh- ah, thanks, I already reviewed all the terms, so nothing should have changed. We agreed to split everything evenly. Well, except the dogs.”

Hannibal’s expression twitches again, only this time Will can’t tell why.

“Dogs.”

“Ah, yeah. Molly and I fostered several strays. I could find homes for the cute ones, but some of the uglier ones stuck around.”

“I’ve never heard you mention it.”

Will’s not sure, but he thinks he’s detecting a hint of petulance in Hannibal’s tone. Today really isn’t going well.

“I- well, I guess I didn’t know how suitable bringing up old relationships was inside of new ones. I’m mentioning it now.”

“I want to know everything about you, you needn’t cherry pick the parts from life before me, I am many things when it comes to you, Will, but I’m not so conceited as to believe you had no happiness before I came along.”

Will bites his lip, turning a bit pink.

“I’m sorry. I… suppose I’m used to editing myself.

“I imagine it depends on the company. You are very empathetic. Tell me, Will, why would you edit yourself around me?”

“I guess to appear more palatable.”

It’s not exactly a strange thing to do, in a relatively new relationship, but Hannibal still seems perplexed. His eyes attach to Will’s face again, expression remotely curious.

“Why do you consider yourself unsavoury, Will?”

He thinks on the question for a long time, before sighing.

“… The same reason anyone does really. When people’s genuine interests or personality traits are met with ridicule, they generally change the way they present, not the way they are.”

“You’ve met ridicule? From whom?” His tone is neutral, but there’s a hollowness behind his eyes, and Will thinks that Hannibal might be angry for him. He laughs helplessly, eating a little asparagus, chewing while he thinks. It gives him time to think before he swallows.

“Ah, the usual sob story. I got my fair share at school. We moved around a lot, so it was like a fresh wave every few months.”

“Why do you think you were the target for such cruelty?”

Will would like to contradict the word choice- kids aren’t cruel, they’re kids- but he daren’t when Hannibal looks ready to head hunt every high school bully he ever had.

“I was skinny, and I had glasses, and I read a lot. Like I said, I’m intense.”

“Your intensity is not an inappropriate fixation, it’s a desire to understand your subject.”

“I know that. Other people don’t. I was still just a kid who stared a lot.”

“Perhaps so, but I’d hazard it’s partially because you struggle to focus on a world that constantly vies for your attention in a multitude of ways. When one thing catches your it, you hang on.”

“I’m always grateful for a moment of mental quiet,” Will nods, “that’s what I got from your drawings in the Uffizi.”

“I found your attention to be flattering. Even desirable.”

“Right. Well, some people don’t think it’s flattering, they think it’s creepy.”

“And you’ve been labelled creepy before, Will?”

“Only all my life.” It’s an old ache, one that still flares up every now again, and Will rubs his chest as he thinks fleetingly of every new school he ever started; how eventually, no matter what person he tried to be, the nicknames would come around again.

“You were poor at making friends.”

“I still am.”

“And you had controversial interests?”

“They ran more to the morbid.”

“That’s not unusual in intelligent children. A lack of innocence is the price paid. Once you question things, the answers can frighten and fascinate.”

“My dad used to say the other kids were ‘intimidated by my intelligence’,” Will says, voice becoming a bit scathing, “I don’t think it was my intelligence. Probably my arrogance.”

“You couldn’t communicate with your peers, but you could rely on your intellectual superiority.”

“Even if that wasn’t how I felt, the fact I was so bad at talking made them think it anyway.”

“Your antisocial behaviour was developed because of these peers’ inability to relate to you, so you gave up trying to relate to them in turn?”

“You said that like you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t think you’re lying, I think you yourself are deliberately skirting the true reasons you feel you have become what you perceive to be an outsider.”

“You sound more and more like a psychiatrist when you’re talking to me. I don’t need you to tell me why I’m a freak, I know why.” He doesn’t mean it to sound sharp, but so often he doesn’t mean things to sound the way they do. Hannibal’s eyes go vacant for a blink, and Will thinks he can see him figuring out how to react to the snap.

“Do you think calling yourself a freak will deter me from wanting you?” He asks, probably to watch him flinch. “You labour under the pretence that you are misunderstood, that efforts to protect yourself make you appear unknowable and arrogant, and the other markers of your personality do the rest.

Is that really what you fear, being misunderstood?” He continues. “Or is your darkest fear really that what’s inside of you is so rotten, you’ll turn everything you touch? Do you fear someone understanding you have that inside you?”

Will is silent for a long moment, mind roiling like an ocean of black tar. He thinks of all the girls in college who skirted around him in the library; slurs thrown in locker rooms. He thinks of sitting in a boat on the water, the only thing connecting the sea and the sky, and he swallows.

“I just want to be normal,” he murmurs, “I want to be happy, and feel things at a normal level, and stop fearing being alone with my mind.”

“Normal,” Hannibal repeats, like the word tastes sour in his mouth.

“It isn’t weird to want to be normal,” Will sighs.

“No, but it is futile, and unnecessary.” Hannibal grabs his hand on the table top, and Will lets him, hooked by the urgency in his gaze. “You are not creepy, you are not dirty or broken. You are special.”

“I don’t feel special, I feel cursed.”

“Isn’t it the same thing? Is being kissed by the devil any less of a blessing than by God? They’re sides of the same coin.”

Will lets his eyes behold Hannibal’s face again, and he looks so gentle it makes Will’s chest feel tight.

“I’m just tired of being filled with darkness,” he admits, softly, “sometimes I feel it building up like a pressure inside me, like it could start leaking out of me.”

“And so, we arrive back at the debate of whether bleeding wounds is an effective form of treatment,” Hannibal whispers, “though I must disagree with you. So often I see a light in you I’ve seldom seen in anyone else.”

Will doesn’t know what to say, so he just sets his knife and fork down and sighs.

Standing, Hannibal comes to touch his shoulder, and Will feels him kiss the crown of his head.

When Will doesn’t speak for a long while, Hannibal squeezes his shoulders.

“You’ve been thinking about your father a lot today.”

Will huffs.

“And.”

“I assume there is a reason.”

Will is stubbornly silent again, and then he relaxes his jaw.

“It’s his birthday soon.”

“You won’t be able to go to the grave.”

“He was cremated, but I used to go to the cliffs where I scattered the ashes.” Just mentioning it allows the sound of the wind and waves to leap to Will’s ears. Birds cry, and below him, the waves heave and foam.

Silence. Hannibal seems contemplative, now, too, his voice buffeted by the wind. When Will looks at him, his hair is ruffled in the grey light of the clouds, his face bared the elements.

“I have not been to my own parents’ graves for many years. I try to carry them with me instead. If you needed to go home, I wouldn’t begrudge you that.”

“I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go back here.”

“Here.” Hannibal looks at him. Will turns his head, the ocean gone, the warm red interior of Hannibal’s dining room taking on the feeling of the imaginary- the inside of Hannibal’s mind now, instead of Will’s cold day dreams.

“There. I don’t want to go there.”

“But you feel like you’re betraying him.”

“I feel like I’m disregarding him, like I did in life.”

“You disregarded his lifestyle, not him as a person.”

“Isn’t it the same?”

“No, it’s not the same. We can still love people and fear them, or resent them.”

“Are we still talking about my dad?”

Another pause. When Will peers up, Hannibal’s expression is indecipherable, debating annoyance again.

“I’m sorry,” Will grumbles, feeling surly and unlikeable.

“Don’t be. I am equally responsible.”

“We’ve been bad at not fighting today.”

“I felt like there was something bothering you, and I went the wrong way about asking.”

“I have been known to be rude when I’m afraid,” Will mutters, lifting a hand to cover Hannibal’s on his shoulder. “I’m touched you noticed something was wrong, though, I am. The last few months have been crazy for me, I think it’s easy to rely on old habits to cope. I should have just said something, not gone inside myself. I didn’t want to be selfish after last night.”

“The two situations are not comparable. You are allowed to suffer. You needn’t pretend if you need help from me.”

“I know, I guess I just wanted to be brave a little longer.”

Hannibal’s lips brush his ear when he leans in, one hand smoothing down Will’s chest, leaving a trail of searing heat behind.

“Don’t hide from me. I am so fascinated by the hidden parts of you, seeing glimpses makes me greedy for more.”

Even though he probably doesn’t mean it as an innuendo, the words still make Will’s skin prickle with warmth. He tips his head to peer at him, and Hannibal’s crooked smile reveals the point of one sharp canine.

“Stop touching me like that while I’m talking about my dad,” Will grouses, without malice.

“Would you prefer to go back to talking about Molly? The dogs?”

Will whines exaggeratedly, and Hannibal laughs as he kisses the edge of Will’s jaw.

“Stop it.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“You’re a liar.”

Hannibal’s grin widens, and he strokes through the hair at Will’s temples, leaning to give him another kiss.

“Is there anything else you wish to unburden yourself of?”

“No,” Will sighs, feeling himself start to relax, “no, thank you. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay if you are. We should print off those papers.” He looks uncommonly eager, eyes taking on a flinty brightness. Will reaches to touch his hair, thumb stroking the soft skin under his eye.

“You seem very keen for me to get them seen to.”

“The faster you sign them, the faster you can forget about it all.”

“And focus on you, is that right?”

Hannibal doesn’t answer, but his expression doesn’t change. Will would be offended, but it’s hard when Hannibal displays such naked want. He feels like he’s dangling his feet in steaming water under a night sky, Hannibal’s hands on his ankles. When Will gives in, he’ll plunge him down into the briny depths, nothing but bubbles scattered on the still surface to show he was ever there at all.

“Okay. I can deal with that. Let’s go.”

They get up, Hannibal leading Will by his hand toward his study, bringing their wine with him.

It’s a handsome room inside, with panelled wood and emerald green wallpaper in a faint botanical pattern, various paintings and curios scattered on the walls and bookshelves. Each wall is lit by a bright profusion of objects contained in glass cloches, glowing from behind.  The desk is sturdy dark wood, its surface geometrically scattered with Hannibal’s belongings, everything in its place. He moves to a cupboard behind the desk and retrieves a small gadget printer, setting it up on the desk while Will finds the signal to send his papers to.

Between them, they configure it, silently waiting as the printer start to spit out Will’s future.

“So you like dogs,” Hannibal says, in a tone so casual it makes Will’s face split with the size of his grin.

“We had seven.”

“Would you like more?”

“Possibly. I don’t know. You don’t strike me as a dog person.”

“You may be surprised at how adaptable I can be.”

Will doesn’t know if he can be surprised by Hannibal anymore. He looks back to the printer, accepting the pen Hannibal offers as he scoops up the pages and starts to look through them.

Hannibal lets him in silence. Will drops himself into his chair and pretends not to notice his shifting to stand close beside him.

“Is everything as it should be?”

“Seems to be. She’s sold the house and is moving back with her parents for a bit. They’ll be glad to see the boy.”

Will unearths the last page of the document after a few more moments’ reading, and signs it clearly. Then he boxes the edges of the sheaf and lies it flat on the desk.

“There.”

“So it’s done.”

“It’s done.”

Hannibal hands him his glass of wine. He raises his own in a toast, eyes questioning.

“To you and Molly, and the past you shared.”

Will clinks it.

“To you and I, and the future together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update has taken a little longer. The next should be a bit less introspective and more plot driven. Also, thanks for all your lovely comments... this is a very therapeutic work for me so it means a lot to have it so well received.
> 
> As always, feel free to drop me a line or a prompt over at https://gleamingandwholeanddeadly.tumblr.com/ask if you want to chat. xo


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal and Will navigate their relationship between lunch dates, dizzy spells, and unexpected guests. 
> 
> Warnings: Floral prose, Google translate Italian, explorations of mental and neurological illnesses, canon-typical discussion of violence and murder- also the usual metaphorical masturbation these two are so fond of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please excuse my horrific Googled Italian- and feel free to correct me, I would love that. Thanks for sticking with me, hopefully my next chapter will be up quicker than this one was.
> 
> PS. Some aspects of this chapter will be very similar to the books and show but swapped around in terms of chronology/canon. It may diverge quite considerably.  
> PPS. Next month I'll actually include a sex scene, honestly, I just get sucked up in cute lunch date chats.

Hannibal takes Will’s papers to the nearest postal station, using the small counter in the corner of the store to strip them from the envelope Will had addressed and sealed with his tongue. Hands gloved even in the moderate morning heat, Hannibal folds the envelope up and holds the adhesive to his nose for a moment, scenting wine, motor oil, and a tell-tale hint of sweetness. He tucks it in his pocket, using a pen from the counter to block out two more envelopes, one to the original recipient – Will’s lawyer- and the other to a mail forwarding service. He seals the papers inside the first and then the second, using tape.

“Per l'America, per favore, e dovrei avere un pacco da raccogliere,” he sets the papers on the counter, his hat alongside.  The attendant at the desk doesn’t even look up from her screen as she processes Hannibal’s request, adhering the correct postage to the papers before taking the collection slip he offers her without a word and trading it for a small, neat parcel.

“Prego.”

“Grazie mille,” he murmurs, and then he leaves, replacing his hat as he walks. This early, the streets are quiet, the hot air crisp with newness, the light yellow and bleak and beautiful. Long shadows stretch across the cobbled roads, and Hannibal stays in the shade, a sleek lick of darkness against the gold sandstone architecture. He strips his parcel open as he meanders down a narrow side street, throwing the envelope into an open dumpster and pausing briefly to examine the documents enclosed. Four passports, several permits and visas, all doctored. The quality is as good as he was assured it would be, and Hannibal tucks the credentials into his briefcase- along with his gloves- before continuing toward the Palazzo Capponi. 

His phone rings in his pocket, and Hannibal knows who it will be even without looking at the screen.

“Good morning, Will.” He smiles.

“Hey.”  He sounds distant, almost short, but Hannibal recognises it immediately as shyness. “I’m not bothering you, I hope.”

“Not at all, I’ve just been to post your papers.”

“Yeah, and you didn’t wake me up, or say good bye,” that somewhat ruins whatever cool reservation he was going for, Hannibal thinks.

“I don’t like waking you when you have a day off.”

“Please, life with you is a day off.”  He can practically see him biting his lip, smiling at his shoes. Hannibal has so rarely given himself over to the simplicity of affection for affection’s sake, but he finds himself so frequently filled with love at each of Will’s actions, no matter how banal.

“I’m glad to hear it. Did you just call to say good morning?”

“I like hearing your voice before anyone else does.”

That gives Hannibal a low, selfish thrill of pleasure, hearing the edge in Will’s words. It makes him remember the way he’d looked at him last night, dropping to his knees in front of Hannibal in the bedroom, pale eyes made dark by the shadows, eyelashes like thorns. Hannibal doesn’t think he’s ever felt so powerful as he had then, reaching out to let his fingers clench in Will’s hair.

“Alas, I spoke to the cashier,” he admits, delighted by Will’s playful huff of disappointment.

“Tomorrow, I get to hear your first words of the day.”

“I will have plenty of time to think of something perfect, then.”

“No pressure. I called to ask if I could bring you lunch later on, too. Maybe at that place- the Medici Riccardi, is it?”

Hannibal thinks about Will being alone in the kitchen, and instead of intolerant dread, he merely feels curiosity. He’s not careless enough to leave anything incriminating lying around, of course, but Will’s strange affinity for Hannibal’s mind could lead him to make mistakes.

“You cook?”

“It will be a ham sandwich, but I will y’know, put salad on it if you like.”

“Try some of the artichokes from the fridge, perhaps.”

“I’ll bring a picnic, how’s that?”

Hannibal chuckles.

“A picnic. Sounds idyllic.”

“Well, I’ll be there so, probably not.”

That makes Hannibal suck his teeth thoughtfully. Will’s self-deprecation reads as a textbook defence mechanism, though Hannibal doesn’t think his linguistic habits present in the same way anyone else’s might. Will does not seek assurance about himself, he is almost completely certain of what he is, how he appears. It feels more like a warning.

“I look forward to it even so.”

“Your funeral,” Will laughs, “about one?”

“Wear white for me, won’t you? Black is so dour.”

“White for a funeral? Sure.” Will still sounds like he’s smiling. Hannibal can’t help but mimic it.

“Have a good morning, Will,” he murmurs. They hang up, and Hannibal is still smiling when he gets to work.

 

*

As promised, Will is waiting in the gardens for Hannibal when the clock strikes one. His hands are deep in his pockets where he stands, illuminated in pure white light by the midday sun. Hannibal takes a moment to appreciate him as he clicks down the path.

“You’re wearing white,” he observes, an unfamiliar curl of possessive pleasure flaring inside him, “it suits you.”

“I look like a drug dealer. White is more your colour. Or red.”

“I’ll bear that in mind. Shall we find a seat?”

“I thought we could sit on the grass.” Will tilts his head, laughing at an expression Hannibal cannot school. “I brought a blanket. And you can sit on my jacket.”

Biting his lip, Hannibal just watches, bemused, as Will spreads out a picnic blanket he no doubt bought on the way here. He’d like to protest- say something about his knees- but it would be a lie, and he hates to displease Will.

Carefully, he settles himself down, not sure what to do with himself at first. He thinks of his Uncle Robert, stretched out on a blanket on the beach, pristine suit jacket folded beside him.

Unbuttoning his blazer, Hannibal watches Will kneel beside him, starting to unpack the bag he brought.

“I kind of emptied the fridge, I’ll get some other stuff for dinner from the market on my way home.”

“Don’t worry yourself, I have ordered groceries from the store to collect on my way home.” Hannibal sets his blazer aside and sits forward, letting Will pass him a plate and a Tupperware container filled with olives and peppers.

“Here’s a napkin.”

“Thank you.”

Will starts up an absent-minded commentary on his morning, and Hannibal watches him talk with fond, soft eyes as he eats, basking in the sun. If he’d had a billion mental scenarios at the ready, none of them would have included Will bringing him a picnic and sitting cross legged like a boy to eat it with him. He looks relaxed today, altogether less pensive. Usually he doesn’t talk so much, he seems so determined to keep all his thoughts inside him, but today he’s sharing.

“I’m glad you came to find me,” Hannibal murmurs, eventually. Will gives him a soft smile, not quite meeting his gaze.

“Well, me too. Being with you makes me feel more like myself.”

The words are thrown out with a careful carelessness, and Will busies himself with cutting up a baguette from his bag, offering Hannibal bread and meat wordlessly. He’s still caught, though, watching him, watching as the walls grow up around the courtyard to encapsulate this moment forever in Hannibal’s mind.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m becoming someone else when I’m with you, Will,” he murmurs, “but I’m not sure it isn’t the person I’m meant to be.” Another truth that could as easily have been a lie: when he’d arrived in Florence, he’d been floundering. Even the pretence under which he’s here was poorly constructed, poorly researched, thrown together in his haste to flee. He’d felt like he’d lost his nerve. With Will here, though, he feels steady, deadly on the inside and yet more vulnerable than ever. He knows precisely nothing about how Will entrapped him so entirely, made him so obsessed, but he does know that he would kill the world to stay this way.

“I think that’s sort of what I mean,” Will admits with a desperate shrug of false nonchalance, “I don’t think I knew I could be this calm. This content.”

“So often you say the words I’ve had floating in my head for days,” Hannibal murmurs, “I get the feeling you’ve been peeking in my ears at night, like a zoetrope.”

“A hundred whirring images, making a cycling movement,” Will murmurs. Hannibal nods.

“Trapped in the cage of my skull. What do you see, Will?”

“I see us, through your eyes. Sort of oscillating, orbiting one another, and occasionally we meet in the middle.”

Hannibal smiles. “Do we eclipse one another?”

“Yes,” Will glances at him, catching his eye, and Hannibal sees their irises overlapping in his mind, planets of ash red and mercury blue sliding over one another, surrounded by a myriad of stars, “and we become something completely new.”

 

 *

Will walks Hannibal back to his office at the library, his fingers unconsciously linking with Hannibal’s as they talk.

“Your dinner party is tomorrow, am I right?” He asks, with the air of someone who would like to mentally prepare themselves however they can. “Is there anything you need me to do?”

“I need you to be yourself and stop worrying,” Hannibal tells him, honestly.

“I don’t-” Will pauses like he’s choking on the words, and Hannibal waits patiently, pulling away and unlocking his office door, “I don’t have- I’ll look a mess, I only have what I brought with me.”

“What’s wrong with any of the things you have with you? You have a number of perfectly acceptable shirts.”

“Perfectly acceptable isn’t the same as nice.”

“So buy a new shirt- in fact, wear one of mine.”

Will’s eyes flick up from the floor to Hannibal’s jaw, hovering there. Smiling with barely concealed amusement, Hannibal lets them into his office, moving to open the shutters and let some light in.

“Something of yours.”

“I don’t see why not. We’ll be indoors, it will be informal, you can borrow one of my shirts. I suspect my trousers would be too big for you, but you’re-”

“Hannibal,” Will’s voice takes on a measure of embarrassment, “I couldn’t afford to rent one of your shirts from a tuxedo store, I’m not going to- accidentally spill fifty euro red on it as well.”

“I would rather you spilled wine on one of my shirts and felt more comfortable with my peers the alternative. Are you experiencing feelings of inadequacy, Will?”

“I generally am around you.”

“I apologise if my attitude-”

“No, Hannibal, it’s not you,” Will holds a hand up to stop him, “I’m sorry. That’s- it’s nothing to do with you. It’s me, it’s just me. I look- well, I look like a teacher. I buy clothes from the Gap, y’know, I’ve never- I just feel like I look like a mess beside you. Molly used to say I dressed like her dad- God, she was only kidding but it’s true, I just got used to buying whatever was there, I didn’t care. I don’t know.”

Agitated, he moves to the window, gazing down onto the square below. Hannibal watches his silhouette, sharp shouldered and narrow waisted, and waits for him to calm down.

It had never occurred to him that Will might feel self-conscious like this. About his mind, certainly, but not about his appearance. Aside from his somewhat unapproachable demeanour, Will can’t be oblivious to his physical attractiveness. Hannibal considers the way Will dresses to be incidental to his unique charms- perhaps part of him even likes the ruffled, mismatched cosiness. Even despite that, he knows his affections to be transcendent of such primitive issues. To Hannibal, Will is a gleaming, sharp thing in a world otherwise full of ghosts.

“There is nothing wrong with how you look, and none of my guests will think so, either.”

He’s still silently gazing out the window. Hannibal shifts his shoulders within the confines of his jacket, rolling out the gathering tension there. He finds himself at an unexpected loss for how to resolve this issue. Since getting out of the orphanage as a teenager, he has never experienced poverty, thanks to his Aunt and Uncle and his field of work. Even when he was in care, he knew of an estate that would be available to him when he became of age, courtesy of his parents. His Uncle Robert had treated him like a son, and he had wanted for nothing even after his death.

Will, he suspects, experienced a very different attitude when it came to money. Hannibal is aware his lack of greed is a result of having never needed to be so. Will’s is a resistance to developing a dependence.

“Will, nothing could be less important to me,” he breathes finally. Again, silence. Will doesn’t show any signs of reacting. “I could care less if you turned up in a boiler suit,” Hannibal continues, “all that matters to me is that you’re comfortable…” he stops, because there’s something not right. Will’s hands hang by his thighs, face slack.

Tentatively, Hannibal moves toward him.

“Will? What do you see?”

Out the window, there’s just the quiet afternoon streets, lit by bright Autumn sunshine. Hannibal comes to hover by Will’s side, and sees that his eyes are staring into oblivion.

“A hanging man,” he whispers, so softly Hannibal almost doesn’t hear it. He follows the direction of his gaze, and sees only a pedestrian on a payphone, on the street below.

Curiosity tinged with foreboding, Hannibal turns back to Will. He doesn’t move, that marble statue Hannibal had first seen him as. It takes every inch of his self-control not to shake him, or rouse him. Instead, he holds a hand close to his forehead, feeling the heat radiating off him. There’s that faint sweetness hanging in the air again that Hannibal has noticed before. He wets his lips as he takes in the scent again. Initially, he’d dismissed it as a poor choice in soap or detergent, but now it seems strong enough to taste. Hannibal licks his lips, and the sweetness is undercut by something else, a sort of spiced, drowsing headiness.

“Hannibal?”

Will is looking at him suddenly, blinking as if clearing his eyes, wiping away the images like tears. Hannibal’s hands itch to grasp him and hold him down, and keep him from floating away. He takes Will by the elbows and steers him gently into to his desk chair.

“Come along, let me have a look at you.”

“A look at me, what-?”

“Where did you go just now, Will?” Hannibal hitches his slacks at the knees and drops down in front of him, touching at his forehead.

“I- I don’t know,” Will swallows, eyes widening a bit, “I don’t know.”

“Don’t be alarmed, I’m sure I am just being overprotective,” Hannibal assures, though he isn’t convinced of himself, “but Will, I’m worried you might have a fever. How do you feel?”

He doesn’t reply for a moment, considering.

“I have a headache.”

“You’ve been getting them a lot recently?”

“Yeah, I get migraines sometimes though, I’m not sure it isn’t the weather.”

Unwilling to jump to conclusions, Hannibal frowns, tipping Will’s chin so he can look at his eyes.

“Ocular migraines?”

“Yes.”

“Open your mouth.”

Will tenses his jaw stubbornly.

“I don’t like being treated like a child.”

“I am treating you like someone I care about. I’m a doctor, indulge me. Please open your mouth.”

Will does, albeit reluctantly, and Hannibal can smell the fever there too, deep in the back of his throat. He tips his chin up to the light. No swelling, nothing else untoward.

“Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary? Anything outside the headaches?”

“You mean other than the spacing out?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think so. Maybe I’m a little more tired.” Will looks around then, like he’s not entirely sure he remembers getting here. Hannibal’s brow tightens.

“Any soreness in the limbs?” He asks, trying to keep his tone casual.

“It’s just a headache, and I guess I’ve been a little warm here and there but- we’re in Italy, I might have sunstroke.”

Hannibal rolls the symptoms over in his head. All he really has is the smell, though. A fever, a dreamer, and a scent.

“All right. Perhaps you need to go home and get to bed. I’ll come with you.”

“I don’t want to pull you out of work- it’s fine, I’m fine.”

“What did you mean by ‘the hanging man, Will?” Hannibal interjects. His somewhat guilty silence makes Hannibal sigh with the first hint of impatience.

“I- I didn’t realise I said that aloud.”

“You did. Tell me what you saw.”

Will’s eyes flicker frantically now, from one corner of the room to the other.

“There was a man standing on the street,” he murmurs, “but for a second I thought he had a noose around his neck.”

“Was the man someone you knew? Your father?”

“Not my father. I don’t think I knew him.”  Will frowns at the floor, and his hands go to his pockets, rummaging for aspirin. “I should go home…”

“Let me take you.”

“It’s okay, I’ll get a cab.”

“Will-”

“Hannibal, I’m not your patient,” Will snaps. Despite knowing it’s embarrassment and panic that’s making him lash out, Hannibal still can’t help but curl his lip slightly.

“Very well,” he says, standing up. Will takes an aspirin; rubs a hand over his eyes.

“I’m sorry. I have—I think maybe this is a migraine, somehow. I don’t know. I’m just gonna go home. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”  Hannibal smooths a hand down the front of his rumpled jacket, looking at the desk. When he looks up, Will is standing beside him, leaning into his space. With the sun against his hair, he looks fragile and tired. Despite himself, Hannibal lifts a hand, cradling his cheek. “Please let me know when you’re home safely.”

“I will,” he promises, letting Hannibal touch him, leaning in like it relieves his pain.

“Will,” Hannibal echoes again, hands settling on him more firmly, “I’m worried about you.”

“I think it’s just- a virus of some kind, maybe? I’m fine, I just need to lie down.”

Sceptical, Hannibal just nods, uneasy at Will’s wavering movements. This seemed to come over him so quickly, much more fiercely than before. A cold, sour sting starts in Hannibal’s stomach, unfamiliarly weighty.

Finally seeming to wake up a little, Will turns away, rubbing his hair as he moves to retrieve his bag from where he dropped it by the window.

“I’ll see you at home?” He asks.

“Of course. I won’t be late. Please, don’t hesitate to ask if you need me.”

“I won’t. Stop worrying.”

A looming exhaustion seems to be the only thing afflicting him by now. He gives Hannibal one more uneasy grin, and then leaves, the office door gaping behind him.

Inhaling the lingering frisson of heat, Hannibal turns back to his desk, taking a moment to collect himself as he shuffles his papers, opening his textbooks up and retrieving the notebook computer from his briefcase. Suddenly, he is aware of another scent: cigar smoke and ink.

“Can I help you?” He asks aloud. Beyond the door, someone startles, and Hannibal waits until a head appears around the door.

“Apologies for the interruption,” says the stranger, Italian accent heavy, his hair closely cropped and face weathered with disappointment, “my name is Rinaldo Pazzi, Chief Inspector of the Questura.”

He flashes a badge. Hannibal tilts his head curiously. In his pocket, a linoleum knife presses comfortingly against his thigh.

“Commendatore. How can I help you?”

“I'm investigating the disappearance of your predecessor, Signore de Bonaventura,” the Inspector supplies, hands turning almost nervously, “I was wondering if-”

“Predecessor implies I have the job. Unfortunately, I don't.  Not yet.  Though I'm hopeful.  They are letting me look after the library, for a stipend.”

Pazzi nods, eyebrows tweaking.  “Yes, well.”

“What do you think happened to him?” Hannibal prods, giving a genial smile.

“It could be anything, bad debts, bad love- we haven’t found anything to suggest foul play, but I was wondering if you had come across…”

Ordinarily, a warm flare of excitement would alight Hannibal’s core now. In the past, his endeavours have been born of pure whimsy, and he has always relished the opportunity to play peek-a-boo with law enforcement. On the night of his escape from Baltimore, even his brutal, brawling knuckle fight with Jack Crawford had felt like a triumphant song, trickling from the lips of an ancient god of war.

Now, he thinks of Will, disorientated and vulnerable, and such games are no longer a temptation. He can’t kill Pazzi here, now, it would be reckless. But he will kill him. And he will cook him, and eat him.

Relaxing his shoulders, Hannibal tilts his chin, offering a nearly invisible smile.

“A suicide note, perhaps?”

“Just so.”

“Ah, and you think it might be stuffed in a book, or in a drawer. I’ll keep an eye out, of course.”

“Very good, Doctor Fell.” Pazzi nods, shifting where he stands.

Hannibal puts his hands in his pockets and watches him with the removed interest of a lion observing the movements of herding prey. He does not stop until Pazzi looks visibly uncomfortable.

“Commendatore, may I have your card?”

 

*

That afternoon when he returns home, the apartment is dimmed, heavy with sleep. Hannibal drifts to the study, quiet as breath, to deposit his briefcase before he shrugs off his jacket and carries it to the bedroom.

The shutters are pulled, the room blanketed in a warm gloom. Will is curled on his side facing away from Hannibal, but he seems to be deeply asleep. Careful not to disturb him, Hannibal hangs his jacket and washes up in the en suite. In the enclosed spaces of their room, the scent still lingers, thrumming low. It compels him closer, and he sits down gingerly on the mattress beside Will, reaching to touch his hair. He’s wet with perspiration, and he winces at the contact like it hurts. Hannibal pulls his hand back, watching him stir, brows furrowed and eyelids flickering deep in a dream.

“Will…” Hannibal tries to gently rouse him at the first noise of fear. Will’s body shakes in one world while his mind screams in another, the space between sleep and wakefulness gaining a worrying amount of ground. Frowning, Hannibal lightly shakes him this time, repeating his name. “ _Will._ ”

He opens his eyes. Hannibal softens his grip immediately, but Will doesn’t, grasping at Hannibal’s forearms with surprising strength.

“A nightmare,” he breathes, voice thick.

“I know. It’s all right, I’m here.” Angling closer with the insistence of Will’s hands, he shushes him. “You’re okay, it’s okay.”

“I—I’m glad you’re back,” Will whispers. He looks so afraid, the whites of his eyes shining. Without much thought for the consequences, Hannibal removes his waistcoat and socks and lies down beside Will, obligingly settling in the beckoning space of his arms.

“How do you feel?” He strokes Will’s damp curls, a terrifying, ferocious tenderness swelling in his throat when Will’s fingers scrunch into his shirt and stay there.

“I’m, uhm,” he blinks a few times, swallowing, “yeah, I think I’m okay. A little better.”

“The dream was just the usual?”

“Yeah, just… just a dream.” He turns his face into Hannibal’s neck, and Hannibal wonders if he’s breathing him in, reacquainting himself with reality. They hold onto one another for a few long, silent minutes. Will’s legs tangle with Hannibal’s, the top of his foot idly stroking up the inside of Hannibal’s calf, rucking up his trousers so their skin touches. It’s pure bliss despite the gnawing concern Hannibal can’t shake, his head filled with Will’s essence.

“I think I missed you today,” he whispers into the dark, “I was so happy to see you at lunch, and felt myself bereft just for the afternoon.”

Will laughs, but he doesn’t sound mocking.

“I think I missed you too. I have the strangest feeling, like before I met you I still walked alongside you. Like when things didn’t work out, maybe it’s because I knew, somewhere buried down deep in my bones that something was missing.”

“I have never been sentimental when it came to the idea of love, or soul mates,” Hannibal murmurs, “but I can certainly see the appeal.”

“It’s crazy, whatever this is.”

“It is.”

“I like it though,” Will murmurs, “I know it doesn’t seem like it sometimes- I know I’m sick right now and I seem- precarious- but I feel like the foundations I’m on are secure because of you. Even though it’s been… no time at all.”

Hannibal closes his eyes, committing it to memory, every second. He buries his nose in Will’s hair and inhales, pulling him closer into his body.

“Your fragility is one of the things that makes you unique. Your health is important to me, but I don’t consider our time together blighted by whatever is vexing you at the moment. I enjoy knowing the best and worst of you, side by side.” Will smiles, and Hannibal takes the opportunity to nudge him. “I think it might be worth seeking medical attention if these problems persist.”

That stops him smiling. He sighs and says nothing for a long moment, stroking down Hannibal’s chest. Then, he frowns, bemusement engaging his delicate features.

“The man I saw. Earlier.”

“Yes?”

“He was outside your office when I left. Was he real?”

Time slows down. Hannibal focuses on Will. He has only a split second to make his decision, like he’s in a red room with two doors and a ticking clock, choosing whether to close or open one forever. One closed may close many more. The other may open those best left boarded up.

The desire to lie is strong, and easy. Hannibal reaches for the open door, then derails, instead gripping the cold handle of the truth.

“Yes, he was real.”

“Who was he?”

The door yawns open, the light beyond devouring the darkness.

“He was Chief Inspector of the Florence Police.”

Will looks into the mid-distance, one of many tells he has: he is anticipating being overwhelmed. His voice takes on an involuntary mirroring of Hannibal’s own accent, something like fear.

“What did he want?”

“He is investigating the disappearance of the previous Museum Curator. Understandably, he was curious about how my arrival in Florence coincided with that.”

Will does not speak at all then. His expression goes flat and remote, and Hannibal briefly considers it to be another dissociative episode before Will turns his face back into Hannibal’s chest, fingers tightening once more in the fabric of his shirt.

“Coincides.”

“Yes.”

He waits. A cool wind starts to blow in through the open door in Hannibal’s mind, raising gooseflesh along his arms.

“Hannibal.” Will says it wistfully, almost. Hannibal doesn’t think he can possibly misunderstand the implication of what he’s been told, but he doesn’t leap away from him, or even stir.

“Yes?”

“Don’t tell me anymore. Not yet.”

“I suppose given the conversation we had before this one, it seems threatening-”

“It’s- it’s not that,” Will interjects, voice apologetic, “it’s… I don’t know. You’re here, so you’re not under arrest. That means there’s nothing to suggest you’re definitely a suspect. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to start throwing around potential scenarios of what the future may hold when at the minute, I’m struggling to hold onto the present.”

“Struggling?” Hannibal nudges his chin with his fingers, so that their eyes meet.

“I want to keep it,” Will explains, voice gritting out, “just for a while longer. And I think, given the circumstance, it might be better if I don’t know whatever it is you think I ought to, at least for now.”

The door stays tentatively open. Hannibal can’t bring himself to begrudge Will, but he does labour on the moment, doing his best to appear apprehensive. Will sighs, leaning up on his arms in a familiar motion, pressing a kiss to Hannibal’s lips.

“I still want to know whatever you have to tell me, and if it’s important to you then you can- but I don’t think it would be wise to make me an accomplice to anything right now, and that’s what I’d become.”

“An accomplice suggests participation.”

“And I can’t participate if I don’t know what you’re accused of.”

He was prepared to feel offended, but Hannibal’s resolve simply strengthens with Will’s pragmatism. He is steely in ways Hannibal had not accounted for, and more calculating than he’s given him credit for, until now. Part of him wonders, just for a flicker, if Will had read more deeply into Hannibal’s history than he’d let on.

“All right. It can wait,” he agrees.

“Thank you,” Will murmurs, “and thank you for being honest.”

“I want to take care of you,” Hannibal tells him, sincerely, “for as long as I possibly can.”

Will smiles at him, visibly soothed by the words.

“Then stay with me,” he whispers, “just here, like this.”

“I have to start preparations for tomorrow’s dinner party at some point,” Hannibal protests, tempted regardless.

“Well, all right.” Will sighs. “Stay with me for now. And later I’ll get up and help you.”

Hannibal’s eyes narrow, amused.

“Help me. With dinner prep.”

“Yeah.” Will kisses him again, like he always does when he wants to change a subject. Hannibal allows it, though, drugged by the taste of his lips; soft sweep of his tongue.

 In a while, they’ll get up again, and the wind will blow more fiercely through the door Hannibal has opened- but for now, he’s happy to stay curled in the warm dark of Will’s affections.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feel free to drop me a line or a prompt over at https://gleamingandwholeanddeadly.tumblr.com/ask if you want to chat. I also write lots of short fic there that usually doesn't end up over here, so... y'know. Come say hi. xo


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Will's illness whittles his grasp on reality, Hannibal fights to keep him afloat, and his own secrets safe. 
> 
> Warnings: Graphic sex, some disturbing imagery, actual (canon) murder of a minor character, lots of violence but little gore, general emotional whiplash from all the cuddling-to-agony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait- this chapter got a little longer, and underwent a lot of transformations! I hope you can start to see the story taking shape, thanks for reading <3

Will observes, not for the first time, that knowing who Hannibal is on paper would be as simple as opening the browser page on his tablet and searching his name. He thinks that the name- Hannibal Lecter- is the real one. He also thinks that the name is a gift: a dangerous secret whispered in his ear, the power to destroy the delicate world they coexist in together.  

Will doesn’t plan to abuse this privilege. He knows, waking to the delicate caress of Hannibal’s hands, that who he is on paper is of no concern to Will. Who he is now, bending to press a kiss to Will’s jaw, throat, chest, is the only Hannibal he cares about.

“You woke me up,” he croaks, unable to keep the pleasure out of his sleepy voice. Hannibal smiles against his skin as he kisses his sternum, and Will sighs in content. “So I could be the first to hear your voice.”

He nods.  Will hums.

“Did you think of something perfect?”

Sun hits Hannibal’s tawny hair, rending his face in partial overexposure, the wine-red of his iris the only spot of colour.

“ _Sono debole per te_ ,” he murmurs. Will bites his lip against a laugh, but it still touches the edge of his words.

“You know my Italian is terrible.”

“You will have to consult your dictionary.”

“I guess I will.”

Hannibal’s teeth scrape delicately against the jut of a rib, and Will squirms, lazy heat already rolling in his stomach.

“How do you feel?” Hannibal asks.

“I think I’m okay. That cold compress seemed to help last night.”

“Good.” His head sinks lower still, the broad stretch of his bare shoulders endlessly tempting for Will’s hands, his skin smooth and back muscled. His lips brush low on Will’s stomach.

“You’ve got dinner prep today. Aren’t you going to be behind schedule?”

“I certainly hope so.”

Will’s eyes close with the force of his smile. He flops an arm over his forehead, luxuriating in Hannibal’s touch. It’s been a long time since he felt like this; loose-limbed and easy. Darkness has always been so comfortable, and Will has been protective of having his own space. Maintaining any kind of mental separation from Hannibal seems like trying to cup smoke in his hands to keep it from the air.

Hannibal’s tongue sweeps over his hipbone, and Will sighs, his cock filling out steadily under the constant attention.

“Are you certain you’re well enough for this?” Hannibal asks, fingers curling into the waistband of his shorts questioningly.

“I better be,” Will murmurs. Hannibal nods his assent and delivers the first hot caress of his mouth to the base of Will’s cock, tongue flicking. Will gets lost in the stroke of his hand and those first hot swallows of his mouth, his eyes closed like he’s mapping Will with his tongue, memorising every detail.

Sighing, Will arches minutely, scorched by the steady, lazy stimulation. His body winds tighter and releases tension in increments, spurred by Hannibal’s lapping tongue and the wet sounds of his throat when he sucks Will down as deep as he can.

“Hannibal…”

Sweat starts to mist on his shoulders and chest, stomach caved with the effort of his restraint. Hannibal is dismantling him, watching from between the strands of his fine, silvered hair, his eyes narrowed in satisfaction as he moves smoothly up and down.

“Hannibal,” Will pleads again, thighs starting to tremor. He watches, several soft gasps escaping him, as Hannibal draws up to the tip of his cock, lips stretched, and deliberately whirls his tongue over the tip. “Oh god…”

When he lets Will’s cock slip from his mouth, his hand picks up the slack, spreading spit and precome down his shaft with tight, slow squeezes.

“What do you want, Will?”

“I want you up here with me, please.”

“You don’t want me to stay down here?”

He’s got one eyebrow raised, mouth curved like he knows just what he can do with it. Will is sorely tempted, but…

“I want you up here with me,” he repeats, softly, “please.”

Hannibal complies, mouth still curved in a smile as he lies down beside Will, accepting his urgent kisses graciously. They fumble to eliminate any remaining clothing, and Will feels Hannibal’s barely-repressed shudder as their bodies touch. He reacquaints himself with Hannibal’s skin, exploring the ridged muscle of his ribs; the curve of his waist. When his hand smooths down his stomach, Will marvels at the way Hannibal’s body bows toward his palm.

He presses another tiny kiss to the corner of his mouth and leans away for the moment, to the bedside, where he retrieves the lube Hannibal had unapologetically studied for five endless minutes in the tiny drug store near the Bargello. Now, Will’s glad for it, pouring some into his hands and wrapping both around Hannibal’s hard cock, working the surprised gasp out of him with his fingers gently rolling his sack.

Then he kisses him, and Will can taste the bitter salt tang of himself on Hannibal’s tongue. Their movements become clumsy with need, their hands tangling between their bellies and in one another’s hair, and eventually Hannibal pulls Will’s hands away and grips them against his chest.

“Turn over. Open your legs,” he mutters. Heat shoots up Will’s spine at the words and he immediately complies, settling with his back against Hannibal’s chest and letting his thighs gape. He keeps his hands clasped against his chest when Hannibal slips his own down to grip Will’s hips; guide him until his ass sits flush against the bracket of Hannibal’s hips, his cock snug between the cradle of Will’s thighs, nudging against his perineum. “Good, now close them.”

Will gently squeezes his thighs shut, groaning at the feel of Hannibal’s cock between them, thick with arousal and still slippery. It feels so intensely intimate, searingly hot.

“All right?” Hannibal murmurs, tucking his chin over his shoulder, breath ghosting against his cheek. Will can’t think of any words that convey how completely all right it is; how deeply, painfully turned on he is by having Hannibal like this. He wants to suggest they go further- wants Hannibal inside him, stretching deep- but right now he’s too impatient to consider the logistics that might accompany anal sex first thing in the morning.

Finally, he just nods.

“Yes- go-”

Hannibal does, fucking the gap between Will’s thighs slow and smooth, panting softly, breath blasting cool on his skin. His hand wraps around Will’s leaking cock, the push of his hips pushing him into the squeeze of his fingers. Groaning, Will lifts an arm to grip at Hannibal’s hair over his shoulder, utterly lost in the feeling of his hand and the motions of his body. Sensation becomes abstract shapes and colours behind his eyes, their noises far away even inside his head. Just the equation of sound and sensation gives him the perfect mental image of Hannibal, body curled with tension, his teeth bared and muscles bunched as he takes pleasure from Will’s body. He feels the coiled strength in him like a bow string pulled tight.  When Hannibal’s thrusts speed, his hand moving in fast, long tugs, Will feels the tight slick between his thighs get hot and loose with the beginnings of Hannibal’s orgasm, his cockhead smearing wet against Will’s skin before he sinks his teeth into Will’s shoulder. The pain sends a bolt straight to his core and he’s coming, body strangled by the force of it, shaking with the pleasure.

Panting, Hannibal gives a few more lazy rocks, sending fluid dribbling, and then he pulls away. Will lies on his stomach while he waits for his pulse to regulate, and Hannibal takes care of clean up with a hot washcloth, kissing Will’s shoulder before he goes to drop it into the laundry hamper.

He spoons up behind Will then, pulling him back against his chest again. With bodies slotted like tiles, Hannibal’s hands gently working over his skin, Will feels easy and safe.

“What do we need to do today, prep-wise?” He says eventually, when Hannibal’s breathing is threatening to go too deep against his back.

“You need to go back to sleep,” Hannibal tells him, “at least for a few more hours. I can wake you when I need help. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

“You never forget anything.”

“Not when it comes to you.”

“Or ever.”

“I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things.”

“Only if it was on purpose, maybe.”

Hannibal nips at his shoulder, rubbing his hips.

“Just try to sleep for me, yes?”

“Whatever you say,” Will grouses, but his eyes already feel heavy again. He twists over to silence Hannibal’s rejoinder with sleepy, drowning kisses. Hannibal wraps his arms against his back and hums against his lips.

As he drifts, Will hears the far off thunder of drums.

*

With a crack, he jerks upright in bed, the sound overwhelming, deafening. He opens his mouth to make noise, but all he can hear is the relentless pounding, the floor vibrating with the song.

His senses perceive nothing but the darkness and the noise, and then a long rectangle of pale light. Will’s heart thumps hard, but slows like a written ellipsis, and on the third thud, a creature appears.

It’s grotesque in proportion and crepuscular in execution, stretched and angled, and from its head sprout antlers like a thicket of thorns. Its eyes glow with a dead, milky light that Will knows from the dull sheen of death. His breath catches, and the lights come up, and he can hear screaming.

Hannibal’s face then, his hands gripping at Will’s face like he could hold his brittle porcelain head together. His voice comes, soft and easy, like a sheet of silk dropped into water. Will reaches for it, grasps, and lets it pull him to the surface.

“… Will, can you hear me?”

The throbbing beat of his pulse starts to fade. Will looks around, eyes sluggish in his head, and thinks he sees the doors and windows bouncing silently off their hinges. When he looks back to Hannibal, he’s got his fingers on Will’s pulse, counting the beats to his watch. His eyes leave burning trails of afterglow as he moves, lashes cutting out shadows.

“Lie down, Will,” he murmurs. With his hand on his chest, Will slumps back against the pillows, breathing hard, awareness coming to him in a sharp, sickly wave.

“It was a nightmare,” he murmurs.

“Some nightmare. You screamed, and you seemed to be convulsing.”

“Not unusual for them to be vivid.”

“Unusual for them to follow you into the waking world.”

“I’m not sure I didn’t just wake up.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Hannibal frowns and takes Will’s jaw in his hands to tilt his mouth open; examines his eyes with a torch from the bedside table.

“I’m fine.”

“Which medical degree are you using to deduce that?”

“I’m-”

“Will,” Hannibal’s tone leaves no room for foolhardiness, “I’m concerned you had a seizure.”

“Are my pupils reacting?”

“Yes.”

“And my face works.”

“Yes, but that’s not an indication, I said a seizure, not a stroke.”

“I have a headache, I don’t think-”

“Will, there is something wrong with you-”

“I’m not going back to the hospital!” Will snaps. Hannibal’s silence is as patient as it ever is. Will sits forward and covers his face with his hands, and leans into it when Hannibal loops his arm around his shoulders with the barest pressure.

“Is this psychological, Will? Was it this bad before?”

Will breathes in the scent of him, wine and herbs from cooking. It calms him. The drums have almost entirely receded.

“It was like this, and not like this. I don’t know what this is. It’s familiar but... it has a different flavour.”

“What is the flavour?” Hannibal asks. His voice takes on keenness. He sounds like he has his own ideas.

“Rancid,” Will says, softly. “Before it felt… like drowning. This feels like decay.”

“You still will not see a doctor, even with that revelation?”

“It’s not a conversation I feel ready to have today. I’m not infirm, I know it’s not that bad, maybe it just looks alarming to you.”

That makes Hannibal sigh. He touches the back of Will’s neck, soothing and grounding, his thumb stroking the soft skin. Will becomes formless in his lap, lax and safe. He shifts to get more comfortable once, and then stills again.

“Can I come help with dinner, now?” He says. Hannibal sighs and brushes curls back from his sweaty forehead.

*

In the buttery yellow light of the kitchen, Will watches Hannibal cut radishes into flowers, lavishly garnishing a centrepiece for his dinner table. He’s doing the only job Hannibal has seen fit to bequeath to him, and that is polishing silverware with vinegar and hot water.

“When I was a kid, my dad used to get me to cut carrot slices into shapes,” Will says, in a tone that suggests he’s a culinary expert too, and he’s not sure why Hannibal doesn’t trust him. “We had a star, and a club, and a diamond, no hearts though.”

Without looking up from what he’s doing, Hannibal huffs a bit.

“I should let you take over with this then, should I?”

“If you want, I can whip up some Marie Rose dressing.”

“Isn’t that ketchup and mayonnaise?”

“And paprika.”

Hannibal curls his lip.

“No wonder you can’t stop eating my food then, I suppose,” he murmurs, whapping the back of Will’s knuckles gently with the flat of his knife when he sneaks a radish. Will pops it in his mouth anyway and keeps polishing.

“Food cut into shapes tastes better,” he observes.

“Even dipped in ketchup and mayonnaise?”

“Honestly, at this point I’m just trying to find ways to make you say ‘ketchup’ some more in that accent.”

That gets him a fond look of reproach.

“There is nothing wrong with my accent.”

“I love your accent.”

That makes his eyes narrow with pleasure. Hannibal passes Will another flowered radish.

“What did you see, Will?” He then says. “When I came in the room earlier you looked at me. You looked so afraid, like you were trying to get away from me.”

“I was asleep,” Will promises, “just a bad dream.”

Hannibal keeps slicing, silent, but Will thinks he still looks hurt.

*

By the time Hannibal is getting dressed for dinner, Will feels drowsy and irritable, a headache starting a slow drumming in his temples. Fresh out the shower and in his shorts, he puts the shirt on that Hannibal has lent him, feeling like a boy trying on his father’s work clothes as he fastens it.

“It’s too broad on the back,” Hannibal murmurs, abandoning his own waistcoat for a moment to let his hands smooth the fabric over Will’s shoulders.

“Well, I can’t shrink it.” An uncertain silence at his back. Will bites his lip. “Sorry.”

“You’re unhappy.”

“No- I’m not,” Will isn’t; it’s strange to him that he isn’t, “my head hurts.”

He allows Hannibal’s fingers to graze his forehead, the back of his neck.

“You seem warm again.”

“It might be from the shower.”

“It might not.”

Will shrugs, grabbing his slacks from where they’ve materialised, neatly pressed, on a hanger.

“Thank you,” he mumbles, thinking about Hannibal ironing with something almost like fondness.

“It’s all right.” Hannibal is still watching him, popping his collar to fasten his bow tie. Will watches him too, remembering the morning with a twinge of pleased heat.

“A bow tie,” he muses, reaching out to help Hannibal fix his collar, “do I have to wear one of these?”

“I’m not convinced I have one that would go with your outfit,” Hannibal tells him, to Will’s relief, “besides, I don’t want you to get overheated. The waistcoat should help tailor the shirt slightly.”

Will looks at himself in the mirror as he shrugs it on, trying to remember the last time he even wore a waistcoat.

“I don’t think I was even this dressed up when I got married,” he mumbles, looking in reluctant approval at his reflection. Hannibal appears beside him, doing up the top button on his suit jacket but not the second. He has a pocket square.

“It wouldn’t do for us all to be the same,” he tells him evenly, turning Will to him and adjusting him accordingly. Again, he touches his forehead. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m okay,” Will lies. Hannibal stares at him, and Will holds his gaze. He’s careful not to push Will or mention the hospital again, but Will has seen medical journals on his desk; articles open on his tablet, reflected in his reading glasses. It’s both irritating and reassuring.

“I can cancel-”

“You have spent months curing your own ham, you’re not cancelling.”

“It will keep now that it’s cured.”

“I’m okay, and if I get that I’m not, I’ll just go to bed,” Will insists.

Hannibal keeps staring at him, and Will thinks maybe he’s not used to having people argue with him- or indeed having to negotiate things with someone else at all. Will has a feeling they’re similar, that way. He isn’t sure, when he thinks that, why he considered himself alone when he was married to Molly.

“You’re sure?” Hannibal asks eventually. Will nods.

“I’ll tell you if I need to come sleep it off. Scouts honour.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Hannibal says, semi-seriously.

“Yeah?”  Will laughs a bit. “Gonna send me to bed in front of your guests? They might get the wrong idea.”

Smile perfectly pleased, Hannibal tugs him in by his waistcoat to kiss the audacity off him.

*

Will only makes it through the first course before the pain in his head gets overwhelming. He’d been more or less fine through the introductions and the small talk; had recused himself to the kitchen to help with last minute tweaks before they were sat at the table. Hannibal’s colleagues are all very Italian, and all of them seem to have the same empirical air about them, their eyes moving critically over Hannibal’s home, Hannibal’s food, Hannibal’s ‘ _compagno_ ’. Will doesn’t know how he feels about being weighed in on their opinion of him- he does know that they all seem transparently impressed. One of his colleagues, a little, shrew-faced man with a chip in his shoulder, seems to be doing his level best to find fault in Hannibal’s dinner.

“What is the meat?” he asks, “I can’t place it.”

Will glances up from his own meal. He would like to make a scathing retort, but he doesn’t know if Hannibal would appreciate it more than he would disapprove. At the same time, he chews, and wonders the same thing.

“A home-cured prosciutto,” Hannibal offers, topping up the glasses of the guests closest to him, missing Will’s. “I added some herbs and flavoured woodchip to the curing process.”

“I know it’s prosciutto,” the man says tightly. Will can’t even remember his name. Sogliato, that’s it. Fuckface in Will’s head. “What is the meat?”

Hannibal glances at him over the rim of his glass, and Will sees the displeased quirk at the corner of his mouth.

“Pig,” he says, “would you care for another helping?”

Will smiles into his water despite the thumping in his ears. Fuckface is smiling too, tight and unpleasant. Will thinks of Hannibal, bloody in the woods, hunting for his sister’s killers. It seems a familiar image to him, like Hannibal is at home in his daydreams.

Ears apparently burning, Hannibal turns to Will, hand finding his knee for the barest second under the table. His eyes silently ask the question.  Will lowers his glass and nudges their ankles. Conversation resumes, some of it in Italian, some not, barely any of it making its way to Will. Eventually, knives and forks are set down, and laughter sings off the chandeliers.

“Will, a little help with the next course would be appreciated,” Hannibal says, under his breath. Will gets up agreeably, misbalancing and knocking his fork to the floor. He bends to retrieve it with a mumbled apology, and his head fills with a swimming, throbbing pressure, the distant sound of drums like crashing waves.

When he straightens, it’s with his palm flat on the table for support. Hannibal’s guests are looking at him, Hannibal is looking at him, and Will hears the timbre of his voice, low and curled with concern.

“Just a migraine, I’m so sorry,” he murmurs. Hannibal’s hand comes to his waist. The drums are getting louder.

“It’s all right,” he murmurs, “let’s get you to bed.”

He doesn’t bother excusing them from his guests as he leads Will to their room. Pain swells in Will’s forehead like he’s had an axe jammed in his cranium, and he clenches against it, eyes tight shut as Hannibal steers him into bed.

“What is it?” He says.

“Pain,” Will murmurs, “hurts bad.”

“Can I give you something to stop it?” Hannibal murmurs. “I was a surgeon, I know what I’m doing.”

Will is without caution or suspicion: whatever he should feel regarding Hannibal, he’s incapable of it like this. It seems like he’s had a headache for the last three months. He nods quickly.

Hannibal moves fast and smooth, heading into the bathroom for a cool, damp washcloth for Will and then coming back into the bedroom to retrieve a doctor’s bag from the bottom of the closet.

“You have that all the time?” Will asks, confused.

“It’s very useful sometimes, being a doctor,” Hannibal says. Will notices that neither of the names he knows Hannibal by are on the pill bottles that roll around in the bottom. There are foil wrapped scalpels and scissors; surgical gloves and a stethoscope. Hannibal pulls out a vacuum-packed syringe and a dark, small bottle, the lid of which he pierces with the needle once it’s unpacked.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a mild sedative that will relieve pain and help you sleep.”

Will wants to point out that’s not what he asked, but he’s too tired. He holds out his arm, watching Hannibal tapping out air bubbles before he wipes down Will’s arm with an alcohol wipe and administers the shot. He presses a cotton swab over the entry point and folds Will’s arm up.

“Give that a moment. Lie back.”

Will goes, his other hand clasping the cloth to his forehead.

“Don’t let me keep you from your guests,” he says softly, “I’m so sorry I’ve embarrassed you.”

“I don’t care one single iota about what they think,” Hannibal tells him, voice lit with a fierceness Will hadn’t expected, “I only care that you’re all right.”

“I’m all right,” Will promises. Hannibal watches him with scepticism, but whatever he’s given Will starts to relax the tension in his neck and face almost immediately. “I am. Can I sleep?”

“You can. Please come and find me if you wake up before I am finished. You might feel a little hazy. Don’t panic, don’t fight it.”

His voice is starting to sound quiet and far away. Will feels himself awash with relief.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and it comes out as, “I love you.”

When he wakes up, he hears piano through a warm cloud of medicated chill that reminds him of smoking pot down by the river after school. It’s a soft, tinkling melody that makes Will think of clinked crystal, and he rises to it without mental preamble, shrugging on Hannibal’s robe, left at the end of the bed for him. The living room is dimmed, and there are legs and hands dangling glasses scattered around that Will doesn’t recognise or pay any mind. He follows the music, and curls into Hannibal’s side on the piano bench like he did that day in the sun, its phantom warmth on him now as Hannibal curls his arm around his back and keeps playing.

“Hello, love,” he says, voice low and gentle, “how do you feel?”

“Tired of being on my own,” Will tells him, before he can really give much thought to the matter. He expects that stiffening of shoulders Hannibal usually gives him when he’s being rude. Instead, he stops playing, and his hands come up to touch Will’s hair and cheek, stubble rasping against skin. He feels enveloped in Hannibal’s warmth, as though they were fleetingly contained within the incandescent filament of a lightbulb. Hannibal speaks again, but it seems to be to the room at large, not the private tone he reserves for Will. Italian, not for him. Then, the voice that belongs to him again, whispered against his ear.

“I had best go and bid our guests _buonasera._ Please excuse me.”

Will does. When everyone is gone, Hannibal comes to him, hands outstretched. Will takes them, and allows himself to be steered back to bed, where he lies pillowed against Hannibal’s chest in a pleasant stupor as Hannibal reads and strokes his back.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” he says into Hannibal’s skin, voice slurred by sleep.

“You never need thank me for that. Or anything.”

“Even so.”

Pressing a kiss to the crown of his head, Hannibal reaches to turn out the light, and settles back down.

*

Will spends the next few days feeling thick-witted and dull, and for once he revels in it. No pain thanks to Hannibal, nothing at all but the distant sting of the needle; the memory of being plied with cold glasses of water and anti-inflammatories. Will lies on the embracing sofa and reads, and listens to music. Once or twice, he lets Hannibal bathe him in the majestic brass tub, hands scooping water against his temples, fingers soothing over his skin. The quiet whoosh of the water, the steady quiet of Hannibal’s breathing, it makes him realise how isolated they have become. Staring up at the frescoed ceiling, flame bright depictions of doe-eyed apostles, he doesn’t mind. He could gladly never talk to any person but Hannibal ever again.

Hannibal does not allow him to drink, but Will supposes it’s the same difference: two fingers of whiskey, or a shot of morphine. In the evening when Hannibal comes home from work, they cook dinner, and eat, and play piano, and talk about Will’s father, Will’s life before Hannibal, and Hannibal’s lack thereof. If some nights Will notices Hannibal come home in different clothes than he left in, he doesn’t acknowledge it.

Eventually, the doses get less and less. The days get clearer and brighter again. Will lets them, _don’t fight it_. The headaches don’t go, but they’re less burning now.

“I feel like a mother in a Jane Austin,” he mumbles one evening, stretched out on the sofa again, holding a mug of tea to his chest, “suffering with my nerves.”

Hannibal laughs, softly.

“I don’t know if it’s your nerves. You seem better for having rested, though.”

“I’m better for not feeling like my brain is about to burst out of my skull every five minutes,” he agrees. Hannibal says nothing, smiling privately, writing rapidly in one of his very many journals. “What are you working on?”

“Just the final notes for my lecture tomorrow. If the board approves, I will be the Master of the Capponi.”

“That sounds very fancy, Doctor Fell,” Will murmurs.

“It is very fancy. Do you feel up to attending?”

Will pretends not to hear the very fragile hope in Hannibal’s voice.

“Of course. I’m your _compagna_ , am I not?”

“I have a feeling you are bad at Italian just to get a rise out of me.”

“So what if I am, _compagna?_ ”

“ _Compagno_ ,” Hannibal corrects easily, “though personally I would use _‘innamorato mio’_.”

Will knows what that means. He fights his grin off with an arm over his face.

“You’re impossible.”

Hannibal stands, setting aside his journal, and comes to lean over Will, hair brushing his forehead as he kisses him.

“Then I’m perfect for you.”

Will can’t argue with that.

*

The lecture is incredible. Even with a familiarity of the Italian masters, Will is schooled anew by Hannibal’s acumen. He recites the lecture in English, but answers questions and repeats translations in perfect, charming Italian. The board of professors on the front row applaud with all the energy several middle-aged teachers can, but a good proportion of the din comes from Will. The attending students mill around after the fact, waiting to corner Hannibal with questions and research propositions. Will stays in his seat, arms folded across his stomach, and holds in his bursting pride.

He feels eyes on him, then. When he turns, a man hovering against the wall of the great hall diverts his gaze. He is grey in all facets of his person, with the glass-bright eyes of a good cop, the grim set mouth of a tired one, shining in the near dark. For a moment, Will thinks he sees a noose around his neck.

People are starting to filter out of the dim lecture hall. Hannibal talks to his peers, smiling and gracious, and accepts several handshakes, and many papers and cards. Will glances back to the wall, and the Chief Inspector is gone.

Finally, the crowd thins enough for Will to get to Hannibal. He touches Will’s waist, the smile coming from his eyes now, not the cordial thing he wore before.

“I’m very impressed,” Will tells him, smiling through every pore.

“I’m humbled.”

“Please,” Will whaps him lightly with his program, “nothing humbles you.”

“Nothing except you. Shall we go for dinner? I know it’s late, perhaps just a drink or two.”

“Is it to be a celebration?”

“I believe so.” Hannibal looks over his shoulder, and his smile becomes stiff again, gaze cooling. Will looks, and sees the Inspector again.

“Another admirer,” Will muses.

“So it would seem.” Hannibal looks at him. “Shall we go? The little place we found last time, I think that would do nicely. I haven’t made a reservation, but they should remember us.”

From the tip, probably. Hannibal had spent a lot, and added twenty per cent.

“All right,” Will nods. He’s surprised when Hannibal leans in, brushing a kiss to his lips.

“You’re sure you feel well enough?”

Will nods.

“I’m sure.”

*

He sleeps, and sleeps, and only wakes when either the fear, or Hannibal, stirs him. Though he doesn’t mention the hospital again, Will notices creases at the corners of his eyes when he tends to him, his sleeves rolled up and his powerful forearms tensed.

“Look,” Will murmurs now, as Hannibal reads a paper beside him in the bed, pale pyjamas making him look younger, “if I’m not better in a couple of days, we can go to the hospital, okay?”

Hannibal looks at him, brows furrowing just slightly.

“With respect, you haven’t improved for the last few weeks, Will. What difference would days make?”

“It won’t, it’ll just give me time to get used to the idea.”

Hannibal sighs, visibly unimpressed.

“I’m afraid this is something serious, Will,” he murmurs, “there’s something not right.”

“No shit,” Will says, and sighs when Hannibal stiffens. “What’s in the news?”

“Professor Fuckface has gone missing,” Hannibal muses, sucking his teeth, “it’s a terrible shame, I wanted to have him for dinner once more.”

“Where do you think he went?”

“Where do you think he went, Will?” Hannibal asks. As Will looks at him, he hears the front door slam. Familiar footsteps and breaths. Will waits, confused.

“Have you got someone coming over?” He asks Hannibal.

“No, not at all,” Hannibal frowns too. Footsteps come down the corridor. Will hitches himself up in bed.

“Will.” Hannibal unbuttons his suit jacket in the doorway, opening the wardrobe to grab a hanger. He hangs it up, starting on his bow tie. “Are you well?”

 _No_ , Will thinks, but he nods hard.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m good.”

Hannibal glances at him as he strips off his waistcoat.

“Good. Who were you talking to just now?”

Cold fear drips down Will’s sternum, into the pit of his stomach. He turns his head, and from his periphery, he can see pale pinstriped pyjama pants, neatly pressed and folded.

*

Will comes to in courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio with no discernible memory of how he got there. The sky is cool jade and grey overhead, evening stealing in beyond the clouds. Above him, he can see lights on through the tall windows, and he rifles through the files of his memory for something, anything, the last thing he saw.

Hannibal. Home for lunch while Will lay in the sun on the balcony. He’d kissed him with unusual fervour, hands lingering on his skin.

“I might be late coming home tonight,” he’d murmured, brushing Will’s hair back, “nothing to worry about, just a few things to take care of at the museum. I’ll have my phone, you must call me if you need anything at all, promise me.”

And then what? Will frowns. He thinks to this morning; Hannibal peeling an apple in the kitchen with a curved knife, dropping the skin into the garbage disposal in one long curl. A phone call he had turned away from Will to take.

Above him, he sees long shadows moving, and the scraping sound of wheels on a flagstone floor. Shaking off disorientation, Will dashes for the steps up to where the noise resonates from.

He sees flashing lights through one street view window and runs faster, skidding around corners until he sees the warm light he knows from the courtyard. He peers around the white washed wall and finds Hannibal, eyes lit by adrenaline, back straight and a smile making his cheeks full. He’s talking in Italian, Will thinks, though he can’t hear it at this distance. Beside him, bound to a wheeled handcart, is Inspector Pazzi.

Will opens his mouth to shout, but nothing comes, and he sees a crescent of silver as Hannibal slits first the tape that binds Pazzi, and then the skin that holds him together. He moves like a striking snake, a flash of lightning, and then he turns to grip the edge of the handcart, and his red eyes find Will’s. Fire reams off him then, curling into the air, ribboning away. Face distorted by shadows, he’s more beast than man.

Without looking away, he flips the cart, electrical cord unwinding. Will feels blood roaring in his ears, but above that, the unmistakable wet splat of innards on stone.

Hannibal does look away then, peering over the edge of the exhibition room balcony. When he looks back to Will, he doesn’t find him.

Crouched in the shadow of the stairwell, Will dry heaves, putting his knuckles into his aching eyes and kneading away the horror for a few terse minutes. He listens to his rapid breaths and the hummingbird thrash of his heart. Distantly, he hears a crash, and Hannibal shouts.  

Will doesn’t think when he sees someone beating him, he just acts. Beside the doorway is a heavy red fire extinguisher on a bracket, and Will hefts it with both hands, one fastening to the handle and the other on the hose. The stranger is large, with the body and the stance of a boxer gone to seed, and when he picks Hannibal up and throws him, Will can imagine the force. He steels himself, stomach churning, and forces his feet to keep going.

Hannibal’s eyes flash on him like laser points, and Will sees his fear, then, just for a second. The stranger is advancing upon him, Will his befuddled shadow, and as he raises his arms, Will does too.

He smashes the fire extinguisher into the back of the boxer’s head with all the strength he has, watching him go down like an avalanche. Hannibal stares at him for a second like he’s David that felled Goliath, and then he stands up, wiping slick from his face, and comes to Will.

“We must go,” he breathes, lips bubbling blood. One of his thighs is bleeding freely, leaving a trail. Will quivers at the high, metallic scent, and puts his arm under Hannibal’s shoulders.

“Who is that?” He murmurs, starting to walk Hannibal to the corridor, instead diverting into an office that Hannibal points him to that leads through to a less public exit.

“Jack Crawford,” Hannibal says, voice still on the edge of a wheeze, “he’s the head of the Behavioural Science division at the American FBI.”

Will stares ahead as they walk, ducking down alleyways and between dumpsters, ambling a winding path back to the apartment, leaving the sounds of the police behind.

“Is this real?” He breathes. He’s not sure, not today.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Do you think I killed him?” He whispers, when his voice is thin from supporting Hannibal’s weight. The question makes Hannibal thoughtful for a second. When Will looks at him, he’s smiling.

“I certainly hope so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second line of this chapter is indeed a reference to the Night Vale quote from [Here](https://twitter.com/NightValeRadio/status/314379817623617536).
> 
> The actual nature of the story is quite mixed up, but basically, VAGUELY, we still get some season 3 happenings in here, but remixed. Also, you might notice I have gifted notions from the books to Will and Hannibal in this story. I hope this isn’t in any way irritating. 
> 
> The Italian in this chapter could, for all I know, be hot dogshit. Supposed translations are, in order:  
> “Sono debole per te” – “You make me weak”  
> “Compagno” – Partner, or companion.  
> “Innamorato mio” – My lover, more or less.
> 
> Feel free to correct me if I am wrong. As always, thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, thanks for sticking with. Feel free to talk to me [here](https://gleamingandwholeanddeadly.tumblr.com/ask). <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“When I saw you,” Will whispers, “I should have been horrified, I guess… but all I thought was how right you looked. Cruel and elegant and lethal. Like the images in my dreams finally fit with reality.”_
> 
> _“Your rationale is compromised at the minute,” Hannibal says, “there is still time to be horrified.”_
> 
> Hannibal's secret gets out, and it's time for an escape plan.
> 
> **Warnings: This chapter contains some canon-typical manipulation/psychological horror; some grim imagery; depictions of wounded animals (in a subconscious context); non-graphic implied surgery scenes - oh, and several broad overtures in the interest of keeping pace ;)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this took a while. This chapter will hopefully give a twist on familiar plot points in the Hannibal franchise, whilst doing something a little different with it. I can see this story concluding in a few more chapters, so thank you if you made it this far! Enjoy. xo

Will seems to be wavering between reality and dream, his eyes unfocused. He keeps one arm under Hannibal’s as they climb the stairs, and Hannibal isn’t sure who is supporting who.

Stupid to come back to the apartment, but something tells him Jack came alone. The same could not be said for Pazzi: his phone had rung in his pocket when he was tied to the cart, and Hannibal can still hear Alana’s desperate voice ringing in his ears.

He’s surprised by her tenacity: it hasn’t been all that long since he kicked her unceremoniously from a first-floor window after her decision to follow Jack Crawford that night had ended a very pleasant affair. She was amusing, with a fetching steeliness about her, and Hannibal still finds himself reluctantly impressed by her- but the price of meddling is non-negotiable. She helped Mason Verger find him, a man Hannibal had taken great satisfaction in destroying, and now he is on the verge of losing everything.

Mason working with Alana means that they must have been going over Jack Crawford’s head. Alana must have done the psychological heavy work, and then Mason had tried to use Pazzi to confirm his whereabouts- but Hannibal has no idea how long he’s been watched, nor the extent of the information Pazzi had collected on him.

Fleetingly, he recalls kissing Will in the dim lecture hall, in Pazzi’s view. Did he tell anyone about the stranger with Hannibal? Did he find out who he was?

No matter, he supposes. He won’t allow their freedom to be taken, certainly not his own.

Will opens the door and they go inside. They slowly go through the motions of shedding shoes and, in Hannibal’s case, his ruined suit jacket. When he turns from where he’s draped it, Will is close behind him, shoulders tense and his gaze vacant, expression Repin-esque with deep melancholy. Hannibal waits for a beat, and then holds his hands, palm up. Will’s face creases as he takes them.

“I thought he was going to kill you,” he utters, barely enough breath to speak. He clutches at Hannibal’s hands, then his waistcoat. Unusually centred by the rough handling, Hannibal takes it; wraps his arms around Will’s back and feels himself relax when Will melts into it in turn.

“He would have,” he murmurs against Will’s hair, pressing a kiss to his hairline, “I owe you my life.”

“I can’t- I don’t think I can do this without you,” Will admits, voice breaking on the words, “I don’t know who I am right now, I don’t want you to go.”

“Even knowing what I am?” Hannibal says, voice soft.

Will pulls away until the light touches his wet eyes; silvery trails on his cheeks. Hannibal burns with the desire to stroke them away and kiss his fluttering lids, and he does so, drinking in Will’s soft wince of need. His hands tighten on Hannibal’s shoulders, gaze going distracted.

“I always knew what you were,” he whispers, like he’s afraid of who will hear, “I saw you. I dreamed it.” He looks exhausted to his marrow, sweat glowing on his skin. There’s a drained edge to his pallor, his gait unsteady. “I wanted you anyway.”

“Will,” Hannibal says, and his gaze comes back to him, a moment too slow.

“I’m sorry.”

 It strikes Hannibal as almost comedic that Will is apologising to him; that he’s so still and trusting.

“Will…” He repeats, this time softer. He’s at a loss for words. As usual, Will has completely destroyed any idea of how Hannibal had thought this conversation might unfold. Hannibal had pictured gripping his beautiful face, and snapping his beautiful neck, silencing his screams. He had pictured Will holding him off with a kitchen knife, the tendons in his arms and shoulders bunched into knots, his teeth bared like a cornered dog. Hannibal would still love him like that, defiant and afraid.

Instead, Will turns back into his arms when Hannibal offers them, and grips at him gratefully, pushing his face into his chest. Hannibal loves him even more like this, Will’s breath on his skin, all his trembling for him.

“When I saw you,” Will whispers, “I should have been horrified, I guess… but all I thought was how right you looked. Cruel and elegant and lethal. Like the images in my dreams finally fit with reality.”

“Your rationale is compromised at the minute,” Hannibal says, “there is still time to be horrified.”

A frown creases between Will’s brows.

“There’s something really wrong with me, isn’t there? When I came to find you, I didn’t know where I was, or where I went before that. It’s as if I woke up there.”

“You were sleeping when I left you,” Hannibal says, honestly. He leads Will through to the bathroom then, keeping him close as he starts to run some hot water into the basin; grabs his medical bag from nearby to rummage out disinfectant and gauze.

“Did you drug me?” Will asks, voice flat. “Did you hope I wouldn’t wake up? Don’t lie to me.”

“Yes,” Hannibal says, “the same drug I have been giving you with your consent for the duration of your sickness. Whether I’d hoped it would keep you subdued until I returned or not, I couldn’t say.”

“You considered whether you wanted me to wake up, and wonder where you were.”

“I had not considered that you would lose time.”

“You imagined I’d call you, or wait for you to come home?”

“I certainly didn’t think you were well enough to follow me.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have told me where you were going. I told you, Hannibal, the less I know, the better.”

Pulling off his shirt and examining the worst of his injuries in the mirror, Hannibal meets Will’s gaze in the reflection.

“On the contrary, if you hadn’t come to find me, where would I be?”

A silence falls into the canyon between their conversation. Will looks down, giving Hannibal a moment to wipe away some of the blood on his face and hands. Eventually, Will finds his voice again.

“Did you kill Sogliato, too?”

Hannibal tilts his head.

“Does it matter? Will the amount of people change your reaction?”

“No,” Will says, holding onto his stomach like it hurts, “it’s not that. I had a conversation with a version of you, but I think I dreamed it… I saw he was missing and I think I knew then, that it was you. I don’t know why. Something about the conversation we had.”

“And if I said yes?”

“Then I’d have to acknowledge that my brain has been keeping secrets from me,” Will says, tiredly. He seems to think for a moment- and the first signs of incredulity start.

“Didn’t you think that killing him would bring unnecessary attention-? Especially with the Master of the Capponi… I thought this was important to you.”

Hannibal sucks his teeth a bit, not just from the sting of the rubbing alcohol.

“I had my reasons. Professor Sogliato offended me, and he could not remain breathing while I did the same.”

“He _offended_ you?” Will’s eyebrows quirk up. “You risked all this because he _offended_ you?”

“He insulted my cooking, and attempted to torpedo my career.”

“Your fake career. Most people settle for spitting in their drink or something.”

“I did not think that a befitting punishment.”

“Of course you didn’t.” Will brings a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, and he wavers where he stands. “Pazzi. He found out?”

“He figured out who I am.”

“And who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

Will shivers a bit at that.

“He was going to arrest you?”

“Not precisely.”

Will rubs his eyes at that, sighing.

“It hurts to think. Can you be more specific?”

“He was planning to collect a bounty on me.”

“From- wait, no, stop.” He makes a dismissive motion. “It doesn’t matter.”

“He didn’t want to see me in prison, Will. I had to kill him.”

“It’s that simple for you, isn’t it? They break it, they bought it.”

Hannibal nods.

“It was that simple when I was alone. It’s not simple now I have you: it’s imperative.”

“Don’t do that.” Will holds a halting finger up. “Don’t put this on me.”

“Trust me, my reasons are entirely selfish.” Hannibal watches the shake of his hands, and when he steps toward him, Will does not shrink away. Hannibal isn’t tiring of making him prove he’s still in this with him.

“Need some help?” Will asks. “You look like you’ve got a couple of pretty bad ones in your hairline.”

Hannibal hands over the disinfectant.

*

They pack a bag each and leave Florence behind, Hannibal’s heart filled with a momentary bitterness for the end of what he has for so long considered to be a perfect time and place. The train to Pisa is quiet and largely empty for the time of night, and Will leans his weight against Hannibal’s shoulder, letting himself relax.

Stroking a hand through his hair and breathing in the scent of him, Hannibal feels buoyed by the light relief of Will’s acceptance. He had been so prepared to leave Florence alone when he went after Pazzi, and the knowledge that he won’t lose Will is a blinding, brilliant thing in him, shining out of his eyes.

It makes the things he knows he must do a little easier to bear.

At Pisa airport, Hannibal hands over their counterfeit passports and documents, and buys two tickets to Washington D.C. Will stands beside him all the while, quiet, and it’s easy enough with their tans to pass themselves off as European tourists.

Once they’re through security, Will looks at Hannibal with large, uncertain eyes.

“We’re going back to the States? Why-?”

“There are some matters I need to attend to,” Hannibal smiles at him, keeping it easy around his eyes, “and they can only be tended there. I’m hoping it will be a brief trip.”

Exhaustion making his him green around the edges, Will just nods.

He sleeps for the duration of the flight and only wakes once with fear in his eyes. Hannibal shushes him gently, keeping the weight of his hand on Will’s knee to anchor him. The plane is silent and dimmed, most passengers still asleep.

“Are you all right? Do you remember where we are?”

“Plane,” Will murmurs. His hand creeps on top of Hannibal’s, holding on. “I’m okay. Just a bad dream.”

In the tinny twilight, he looks worse than ever. Hannibal pushes the armrest up between them, handing over a bottle of water and some aspirin, watching him swallow them and nod gratefully.

“What did you dream of, Will?”

His eyes have the uneasy shine of taxidermy, too bright to be natural. He stinks of the recycled plane air and trepidation; a clammy perfume of hot sickness and cold anxiety. His voice is barely a whisper.

“A creature. Devouring Pazzi. Then it wasn’t Pazzi, it was me.”

Sighing, Hannibal carefully folds his arms around him, letting Will hide his face in his throat for a moment.

“Your dreams are not subtle, Will.”

“Fear seldom is.”

“You can trust me,” Hannibal says, under his breath, “you have my word.”

Will looks up at him, and the bright terror in his face dulls, and then disappears.

*

Hannibal notes with interest as they leave Dulles International Airport that a guard has not so much glanced in their direction. It unsettles him, despite everything. Did Will really kill Jack Crawford with that blow to the head? Are Florence police still scratching their heads over who could possibly have murdered Rinaldo Pazzi? No. This is purposeful. Hannibal smells a proverbial rat, and it stinks of vermouth and pigs blood.

Idly wondering how many policemen Mason Verger owns, and how much money it has cost him, Hannibal glances at Will in the passenger seat, watching his head loll dangerously against the headrest at a stop light.

If Mason owns the Florence police, they will have kept the secret of his escape quiet in the hopes that he is still in Europe. When they find footage to indicate otherwise, there will be a scrabble to see who can secure a deal about a payout for him. Hannibal will use this expensive time wisely.

Wearing sunglasses and a cap against the mid-afternoon sun, he navigates the car onto the highway and drives with the visors down. He stops once in a small town outside of Baltimore where he retrieves a pre-packed duffel bag from a storage facility, which he then empties the contents of a safety deposit box into it: a few thousand dollars and the keys to a nearby rented garage, and the car within.

Will barely seems to know where they are by now, but he follows Hannibal regardless as he steers him down the alley to the garage, leaving the rental with swapped plates in a parking lot behind a convenience store. It’s not as clean a getaway as he’d normally make, but he doesn’t want Mason and Alana to have any doubts about his intentions.

Sure enough, as he turns back toward Baltimore city, Hannibal peeks a black van idling in the rearview mirror, a few cars back. He does a couple of gentle misturns, as though he’s following a map or searching for something, before drifting back onto course. All the while, the panel van loiters behind him. Hannibal feels no alarm, and no urgency. Mason having him followed is part of the plan- Mason catching him is part of the plan- but not just yet.

Firstly, arrangements for Will must be made. After taking a shortcut through a busy intersection and turning into an alleyway to watch the van rolling past without him, Hannibal checks them into a high-class business hotel in Baltimore and spends the evening in Will’s room, administering meds to limit his pain and then sitting beside him while he makes several private calls. He needs to ensure Will does not come under any scrutiny from the FBI. While he knows Will’s condition will do the majority of the selling for him, he has left enough ‘evidence’ to cement it, and he will leave more before long.

When his business is completed on the phone, Hannibal wipes it down and reaches for Will, feeling his temperature for a long moment with concern. He checks the nightstand clock. The FBI and Florence police may have finished their squabbling now. If Jack Crawford is still alive, and conscious, he will be operating within the law to find Hannibal. That will make him slower than those operating outside of it, no matter how good he is. Hannibal has time to broom their tracks.

*

It takes him all of half an hour to take what he needs from Johns Hopkins Hospital, the interior much the same as it was during his employment there. He leaves nothing behind but an unconscious neurosurgeon, and he heads calmly through the busy emergency room in the scrubs he stole, unnoticed in the fray. No one sees him change in a public toilet and bin the scrubs, and he returns safely to the hotel without so much as a passing glance.

*

Will seems to be deteriorating. Hannibal watches the sweat forming on his skin and gives serious thought to abandoning his plan- but ultimately knows he can’t risk it.

Perching on the mattress beside him, Hannibal strokes his cheek, watching his eyelashes flicker.

“Will?”

It takes a moment of gentle touches to rouse him, and when Will opens his eyes, he seems far away, shrinking from the overhead light. Hannibal switches it off, leaving them lit by the bedside lamps.

“Will, describe to me how you feel,” he instructs clearly. Will blinks rapidly, trying to focus.

“Pretty bad. Hurts.”

“Your head?”

He nods.

“Feels tight and hot.”

“All right.” Hannibal’s hand settles gently on his chest. “I’ll get you to a hospital soon, Will.”

He doesn’t look relieved- if anything, more fearful.

“Don’t go,” he murmurs, “please don’t.”

Hannibal shushes him gently, stroking his hair. He leans and presses a kiss to the tacky skin of his forehead.

“You need medical attention, Will, and I do not have the facilities to give it to you. Do you want something for the pain?”

“Hannibal,” Will interrupts the tail end of the question, “what are you going to do?”

“I have a plan. I can make it all go away, Will, I promise. All you have to do is trust me.”

“I do. I do trust you, I just-”

“Shh,” Hannibal tugs his duffel close with a foot angled through the strap, keeping one hand on Will as he retrieves a loaded syringe, “don’t panic. Let me give you something.”

Offering his vulnerable inner arm, Will watches the needle slide in, and Hannibal feels his eyes drift to his face as the plunger is depressed. He cups Will’s face gently in his hands, and kisses him. Will grips feebly at his side, eyelashes collecting damp.

“Whatever you’re going to do,” he whispers against Hannibal’s lips, voice getting long and drowsy, “promise you’ll come back for me.”

With a sting in the back of his throat, Hannibal nods.

“I promise.”

He holds onto him as he goes under, feeling his breath go deep and even, pulse steady as a drum beat under his fingertips. Allowing himself one more moment of weakness, Hannibal presses his nose into the hollow of Will’s shoulder and scents him deeply, savouring every note.

When he’s satisfied Will is completely anaesthetised, he carries him carefully through to the bathroom, lying him on the tile floor and opening the bag of stolen medical supplies. On with a clean theatre shirt, and all the trappings. He scrubs up with antibacterial soap, then pings on his gloves. His implements are laid out on a clean towel, along with wads of gauze and swabbing fluid. The blade of the scalpel he unwraps catches the light, making crescent moons on the walls and ceiling as Hannibal studies it for a moment, thinking hard. Finally, he sets it down, the light bouncing off his face.

He turns to Will, and begins prepping him for surgery.

*

It’s the middle of the night, and he can hear sirens. A few water taxis drift silently across the surface of the Patapsco River, their lights like fireflies on an inky glass sky. Hannibal watches the harbour breathe; the galaxies blinking on the windows of the angular, squat buildings around, hunched beneath the clouds. It’s not the first time he’s found beauty here in Baltimore, and he hopes it won’t be the last. Even so, he savours the scent of the pre-dawn air, the quiet hum of a city half asleep. On the water, paddle boats bob in the current, and a few jetties extend out onto the river, the same drowning black of Hannibal’s dreams.

He wonders if they have found Will by now. He hopes so.

An engine nearby buzzes like a fly in his ear, followed by a long stretch of silence. On the wind, Hannibal detects a hint of something high and unsavoury, like the stink of a butchers’ rack. He thinks of Mason Verger, heir to his father’s fortune from the Verger meat packing industry. He thinks of Mason’s court mandated therapy sessions, and how he’d boasted about his experiments in breeding the world’s most terrifying swine. The malodorous taint on the wind grows stronger. Hannibal checks his watch. Mason must have hired good help: they found him in only a day.

The dart hits Hannibal in the back of his thigh with a miniscule prick of pain. Gripping it to slow the spread of the toxins, he kneels to prohibit his chances of breaking something on contact with the floor. Chemical sleep rushes up to him and, cringing from its grasp, he briefly wonders if Will felt like this, before he’s swallowed whole.

*

The sun shines through stained glass, illuminating the chapel in dappled spots of colour.  Candles flicker in stands upon the chancel floor, and the sweet soar of choir song fills the empty space.

Reposed on a pew bench, Hannibal absorbs the sound, hands folded in his lap, one leg neatly crossed over the other. He can feel the cotton of his shirt cuffs against his hands, and a bodily warmth radiating from his side.

“Are we dead?” Will asks, voice a soft echo in the cavernous space.

“I’m fairly sure we’re sleeping,” Hannibal says. He watches a priest drift across the tiles before them like a ghost, a long splint extended to light the candles above the altar.

“I hope we’re sleeping together,” Will whispers, leaning their shoulders close companionably, “I hope we’re somewhere warm.”

“I hope so too,” Hannibal says, because even now, indulging Will- comforting him- seems imperative. He wonders if they’re dead, too, privately: if they’ve found one another here and left their bodies behind, silent and vacant. It fills him with a serene sort of content, to think of them together in death, utterly still, hand in hand.

They’re that way now for a long second, watching the dust motes fall.

“I’ve been thinking,” Will continues, eventually, “about us getting a dog.”

Hannibal chuckles, nudging him.

“Of course you have.”

“I think we could adopt an older one. Y’know, one that wouldn’t normally get a chance. It’ll already be housebroken, it might be more expensive for vet treatments but-”

“You have a wealthy partner who will indulge your every whim.”

“Exactly,” Will laughs, looking at him, eyes like mercury.

“You’re not wrong,” Hannibal smiles. Will’s fingers slip between his, and he feels delicate bones beneath his skin. “A dog, hm?”

“We could get a house with some land, enough space for two studies and a music room.”

“A new kitchen fitted into an old farmhouse, perhaps,” Hannibal agrees. It seems plausible now, suspended between the notes of the choir.

“When things calm down, I guess,” Will says. He looks ahead, to the triptych window, beyond the candles. Christ looks forlornly down at them, a shepherd regarding a diseased flock.

“Yes.” Hannibal looks at their curled fingers; the glint of gold on Will’s finger. “We’ll set things to rights, then.”

Will leans his head on his shoulder. In the distance, the sound of iron dragging on stone pierces the still chapel air. Will raises his head to look around, frowning when he turns back. Hannibal keeps his eyes on the altar.

Before them, snow starts to fall onto the mosaiced chapel floor, in a small, uneven patch, the light from the windows turning frosty. Silence falls, the dead, mournful stifling of a winter forest. A young deer stumbles out into the snow, lame in one leg, an arrow protruding from its scrawny neck. Blood spills onto the brilliant white floor.

“Hannibal,” Will breathes. The deer limps on, back leg dragging in the snow. When Hannibal looks at the tiles beneath his feet, he sees milk teeth set in filth. Beside him, Will has started to bleed, holding his side with the resigned stiffness of the nearly dead. He holds Hannibal with his dull, milky eyes. His voice takes on the shape of a gate squealing open. “There’s someone here.”

Hannibal opens his eyes, and sees a face made of scars.

“Doctor Lecter,” Mason drawls, “welcome to Muskrat Farm.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feel free to follow me for more writing on my tumblr [here](https://gleamingandwholeanddeadly.tumblr.com/), or drop me a fic prompt [here](https://gleamingandwholeanddeadly.tumblr.com/ask). Thanks for reading. :) xo


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After waking in the hospital, Will endures the aftermath of 'surviving' Hannibal Lecter.

Will is getting tired of waking up in strange places. His head pounds, throat dry and his stomach hollow. He’s not sure what woke him, but the swing of the hospital door tells him someone’s leaving, and there are voices echoing down the hall. It’s dark in the hospital room when he looks around, eyes adjusting to the gloom as he grips clumsily at the bars of the cot and tries with shaking arms to haul himself upright. Stabbing pain subdues him through a familiar fug of morphine; he eases himself back down and breathes, the ECG monitor beside him growing panicked with his heart rate. He listens to it slow, until finally it’s steady again like the tick of a metronome, back and forth, beep, beep, beep.

Hannibal’s face above him; his cool hands, smelling of rubbing alcohol and talc. He’d been on the phone, Will had heard some of it, though he thinks perhaps it was French he’d been speaking. If Will concentrates, he can remember the shirt he wore and the faint scent of Italian cologne.

Saying goodbye. That makes his chest seize slightly. He’d never seen Hannibal look like that, so conflicted. Action and consequence are the angel and devil on his shoulders, and he idles his time away in conversation with them frequently enough for Will to be chilled by his indecision. He can’t say with any certainty which of them appears to have won.

Will licks cracked lips with a tongue like paper. Even though he doesn’t feel well, or right, he feels clearer. His mind turns to Hannibal again, in his entirety, standing in the kitchen in an apron and shirt sleeves. A knife dangles from his hand, limber wrist, easy as anything. Will thinks of Hannibal in the hotel room, cupping his cheeks with his forearms bared like he was about to take a knife to hand. Will’s eyes drift shut.

_“I can’t place the meat.”_

_“Pig. Care for another helping?”_

Frowning at the thought, Will seizes the thread of it and tugs. A face emerges from the tangle; rodent-esque, dark haired, beady eyed.

_“Where do you think he went?”_

Hannibal’s voice: _“Where do_ you _think he went, Will?”_

An image, strange in its familiarity, comes to him. Hannibal wheels a platter to the table, a joint on a spit roast, dripping fat. He draws his blade over a steel, the light flashing off in bright refracting arcs, back and forth. He carves. Will remembers buttery pork, pale and lean, sweet with sharp apples and peppery leaves.

His hand slides to his side, where the constant, deep ache is shedding heat. Bandages and tenderness.

“Do you understand what I had to do, Will?” Hannibal asks. Will squints in the dark, seeing his lean silhouette. Bare forearms, and an apron. His voice is low, and even, and Will wants to go home.

“Am I playing dead?” He whispers into the dark. “The one that got away?”

“A dozen victims, and you the last. What happy accident befell you?”

Will closes his eyes, head pounding. He understands with a single, incandescent clarity.  

“Fattened me up for months. You didn’t have time to make a meal of me in Florence, and travelling alone would have singled you out. You need to tie up loose ends and take a final trophy before you disappear into obscurity; until it’s safe to come out again. You get elbow deep, and it’s all for nothing. Something wrong with the meat,” he murmurs. Hannibal’s hand cups his cheek.

“Every stitch tells a story, in many languages: only you know what lies beneath the stitches.”

Will looks up at him; the white shine of his eyes, like reflections of moonlight on dark water. “This story is for everyone but me.”

“That’s my boy. I knew you’d understand. You always did know me, didn’t you?”

“I tried my hardest.”

“I saw you trying, and it moved me.”

“So you let me be a victim, escaping from your clutches.”

“A chance at innocence is the greatest gift I could think to give, and one I may never receive.”

“I won’t stop knowing you,” Will promises, into the dark, “I won’t let it go to waste.”

“And I won’t let them take our future,” Hannibal’s voice says. His lips brush Will’s and the dream fades once more into the forgiving dark. He doesn’t dream again.

*

He smells perfume, and then he sees a dark fall of hair, glinting amber in the sunlight trapped in the blinds.

“Mister Graham?”

She has pale blue eyes, the first he’s looked at with any interest for many months since seeing Hannibal’s.

“Mister Graham, you’re in the hospital, you’ve had surgery and you’re being treated for encephalitis,” the stranger tells him, her voice round and gentle. “You were found in a hotel room in Baltimore after Hannibal Lecter tried to remove your liver.”

Will looks at the shifting light patterns on the ceiling. His mouth is still dry, but it seems too much like feebleness to reach for water.

“Who are you?” He asks instead, voice hoarse.

“My name is Doctor Alana Bloom,” she tells him, gently, “Will- can I call you Will?- I know this is a lot to take in…”

“Did you get him?” Will cuts in. Doctor Bloom’s face goes bleak. No. Will rigidly contains his fierce joy, and it comes out as a grimace of pain.

“It’s complicated, and we’ll talk more about it when you’re feeling better.”

“I feel fine,” Will says, blinking around. “I feel- better than I have in months. Nauseous, maybe, and aching.”

“That’s not exactly surprising,” Doctor Bloom murmurs, “you’re on morphine for the pain, but you’ve been through a lot.”

She has a distinct, easy loveliness, her lips the colour of pomegranate blood, her slight build offset by a fierceness that lingers at the corners of her mouth. Will feels instantly that she has known Hannibal; that it’s not merely coincidence that she’s here with him, now.

“What sort of Doctor are you, Doctor Bloom?” He asks.

“I’m a psychiatrist. I specialise in family trauma.”

“I don’t have a family to traumatise,” Will tells her, dryly.

“Your wife didn’t seem to think that was the case.”

“Ex-wife… we, uh, we’re divorced.” He pauses. “You talked to Molly?”

“She’s the only person we could find when you were brought in. She wants to see you.”

Will turns his face away from the words, as if from a bright light or unpleasant sound.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

“Of course. She doesn’t even know you’re awake.” Doctor Bloom tilts her head, eyes travelling over Will’s face. He can’t imagine what he must look like. Probably like Hell shat him into a hospital bed.  When the silence lingers, Will knows she’s thinking of how best to ask him what she wants to know.

“If you’re here on uh, an official capacity, Doctor Bloom,” Will murmurs, head spinning, “then please, ask me anything you need to. I’m more than happy to be cooperative.” He thinks about that, thinks about Hannibal. “I just want to go home.”

“Where is home?”

“I’m not sure right now. It’s been a blur for… a long time.”

“You’ve been away.”

“I went on vacation, to Florence.”

“You met someone there?”

Will nods, tiredly.

“Roman.”

“Roman Fell.”

“Yes.” Will pinches the bridge of his nose with one heavy hand.  “I mean, I think so. I don’t know. We went for dinner, we were friendly…” he frowns, letting the words come out slow and uncertain. Doctor Bloom leans in, her eyes searching.

“Will, you know that Roman Fell is not who he says he is, right?”

“I didn’t know,” Will croaks, “God, I don’t know anything. I feel like I’ve been in a waking nightmare for weeks. I don’t remember what happened.”

“That’s how he wanted it,” Doctor Bloom murmurs, “your bloodwork suggests that you were being dosed… Hannibal Lecter has been treating your encephalitis, Will, did you know that?”

“Doctor Bloom,” Will closes his eyes, “with respect, I can’t remember the last time I was this aware of my surroundings. Chances are that everything you know is news to me.”

“Well, let’s start with what you do remember. You tell me.”

“I remember going for dinner,” Will murmurs, eyes heavy, “I decided to stay in Florence longer than I’d originally intended. At first it seemed like a good idea- it seemed like my idea. Roman let me stay with him, while I was looking for some place to stay. I was thinking of moving, I guess. I don’t know.” He grits his teeth against the pain of lying: it feels like betraying Hannibal over and over again. “One day, I just knew I couldn’t leave. I had been getting headaches, some kind of seizure… I started hallucinating… and then I don’t know. Then nothing. Fragments of moments I’m not sure are real at all.”

“Roman Fell is dead,” Doctor Bloom tells him, not unkindly, “the Roman you knew is a wanted criminal, he’s killed a dozen people, that we know of, and he tried to do the same to you.”

“You said he tried to take my liver…” Will squints at her, the sun her aureole, trapped between her curls, “why didn’t he?”

“The medication he’d been giving you,” Doctor Bloom sighs, shifting in her seat, “was a powerful cocktail. Midazolam, scopolamine, phenytoin for the seizures, we think… it will take you a long time to recover.”

“Scopolamine,” Will repeats, somewhat disbelieving. He thinks of all the times he felt right and easy; that doing as Hannibal said was as sensible as breathing air.

“The mixture of drugs you were given caused liver failure,” Doctor Bloom continues, “which Hannibal Lecter may not have accounted for when he went in to remove yours. When he saw the state of it in, he…” she sweeps her hand. “Discarded it.”

Will could spit at the way she says it, like she has any insight into Hannibal’s motives at all. Instead, he gives a grim smile.

“A temper tantrum.”

“That’s not a bad definition of what it was; the place was quite a state.”

“All this trouble, he must have really wanted it.”

“I suppose if I had put all that time into eating someone, I would have really wanted it, too: he kidnapped you, drugged you for weeks, took you on the run with him, flew you back to the States… and at the end, he couldn’t even claim his prize.”

The words aren’t a surprise, not after his waking dreams, but Will still flinches.

“Hannibal Lecter,” he repeats, stiffly.

“The name is familiar,” Doctor Bloom notes. At Will’s nod, she leans for her bag, and hands him a newspaper. The front-page screams, and Hannibal looks up from its grainy photo.

“He… was the Chesapeake Ripper,” Will says. Her silence is all the answer he needs. He wrings his hands, breath coming harder. He tries to sit up.

“Will, you can’t, your stitches-”

“I’m going to throw up,” Will grits, and she helps him then; holds his shoulder while he wretches into a bedpan, fingers making rubbing, soothing motions. He brings up nothing but bile, and the acrid scent and taste of it makes him think of the way fear had felt, on the plane, hanging in the empty sky above disaster.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a cane leant against the windowsill, not far from Alana’s chair. He stares at it for a few seconds, until Alana handing him a damp paper towel pulls him from his reverie.

“Thanks,” he croaks. She figures out the adjustment settings on the bed while he cleans up, and he eases back against the pillows with her help, looking at her from a more agreeable level now. She brings him water, and he clutches his throbbing side for a minute before he manages to take a sip.

“This is a lot,” he murmurs, eyes flickering closed.

“I know, Will.” She puts her hand on his. As much as he wants to be jarred by the contact, all he feels is a pang of grief at the loss of Hannibal’s touch. He remembers the warm, dry skin of his palms, fingers laced with his. Without his permission, Will’s eyes burn, and he coughs to hide a sniff as he wipes at them. If Alana sees, she doesn’t comment.

“Do I need to talk to police about this?” Will asks finally, when the silence goes from awkward to inevitable.

“Eventually the Bureau will need to take an official statement,” she nods, “but Special Agent Jack Crawford gave me permission to come to you, and sound things out, see where we were at- and see where we needed to go from here.”

Will tenses at the mention of Crawford’s name. He’s alive, then.

“The FBI?”

“It’s a big case, Will, and Hannibal is dangerous.”

Hannibal. Not Lecter. Not Hannibal Lecter, now. When Will looks, Alana has a furtive keenness in her eyes, just beyond the concern. Will would be surprised if Crawford had sent her at all- it sounds like she’s close to this.

“I just want to be helpful as I can,” he assures her.

“No one is doubting your innocence in this, Will.  We just needed to hear your side of the story.”

“I understand.” He nods. “Thank you.”

When she makes no move to leave, he lets his eyelids droop, feeling on the bed for the call button.

“I’m sorry,” he yawns, when she shifts, “I’m… I’m just exhausted.”

“That’s all right, Will. I’ll let you rest. I’ll leave my card, let me know if you need anything.”

She stands. “Oh- and Will?”

“Yes?”

“One of the nurses told me they had to remove a tabloid journalist from your room last night,” Alana tells him carefully, “you might want to avoid the internet for a while, just until you’re feeling a little stronger within yourself.”

Will nods, though he’s bemused by the idea.

“Rest assured, I probably won’t be Googling myself anytime soon.”

She nods, and with that, takes her leave.

*

He stays up for a while after she’s gone, first at the insistence of a nurse who checks his vitals and changes his dressings, then to clumsily eat Jell-o with his right hand cannulated before easing out of bed to take his first uncatheterised piss in three days. The knowledge that he was out for the count for so long is both arresting and liberating. Whatever has happened to Hannibal, he could do nothing about it, at Hannibal’s doing- and yet, he aches with the uncertainty of it: a plunging feeling inside whenever his mind turns to Hannibal. He wants to run to him; to find him and beg to never be let slip through his grasp again. He makes himself wait, until it seems almost normal to ask a nurse- “is there a newspaper anywhere around here? I don’t even know what day it is.”

She flicks him on the TV in his room, and the news rolls through its first stories. It doesn’t take long for him to see what he’s looking for. He mutes the sound and just reads the scrolling ribbon along the bottom of the screen.

_… HANNIBAL THE CANNIBAL KILLS FIVE IN COLD BLOOD – MEAT INDUSTRY MAGNATE MASON VERGER AMONG VICTIMS IN DEADLY ENCOUNTER WITH LECTER…_

Will waits until he sees cuts from the news crews arriving at the scene. To his surprise, he sees a filler shot of Doctor Alana Bloom, accompanying Verger’s surviving sister away from the huge, stately house that had beheld the slaughter. Their hands are linked. He clenches his own.

He sees himself then, too, prostrate on an ambulance gurney, being wheeled out of a hotel lobby while the tickertape tells watchers how Hannibal had kidnapped and attempted to eat an American teacher on vacation. He doesn’t turn the sound on even then, but the broadcast goes on long enough that a grainy photo of him and Molly flashes up on the screen, her face blurred and his unsmiling and surprised. The last photo shows him in his hospital bed, pale and gaunt, everything on show save for a black box over his groin. Will thinks over and over of Hannibal sharpening his knife on a steel, before carving off a slice of whoever had offended him last.

He keeps watching until the tickertape rolls onto the back around a full circle of other stories. No new information on Hannibal, then, no capture or pursuit- he’s in the wind.

Despite Freddie Lounds’ best efforts, something uncomfortably like hope rises in his throat.

*

Hannibal doesn’t come. Will hadn’t really thought he would, didn’t think he would stay in the country, much less rock up to John Hopkins in a baseball cap to collect him- but the empty space Hannibal usually occupies in his life fills up with mourning at the lack of him. He can’t feel him anymore. Not the weight of his warmth beside Will in bed at night, nor the gentle brush of his fingers against Will’s nape or forehead to test his warmth.

He has a few days to recover before Jack Crawford sends someone to take his statement.  Will gives a similar- though more wearied- performance to the one he gave Alana, corroborating his own story with his very real sense of disconnected trauma. It occurs to him, as he’s talking through it all, that it could easily be the truth. Hannibal could have led him down this path, making him believe all the while that it was real- that he wanted him.

The thought follows him that night, as he shuffles down the hospital corridor in his robe, half leaning on his IV stand for support. He stands in the smoking area for a while outside, under the growing dusk, and watches the prosaic life he knew before Hannibal carry on without him.

*

The evening he’s discharged, there’s a cloud of journalists and photographers waiting at the hospital doors to greet him. He steels himself from the doorway, glad to have declined the hospital-standard wheelchair ride. When the doors open, he’s immediately mobbed, hemmed in and drowning in noise. He pushes forward as best he can, but with no immediate escape route, it seems almost impossible to make it to his cab.

Freddie Lounds is at the forefront of the crowd, her wild hair singling her out even if her obnoxious personality didn’t do the trick.

“Mister Graham, is it true you had a tryst with the Chesapeake Ripper?”

“Get out of my face,” Will snaps at her, before he can contain himself. “What the hell is wrong with you, Lounds?”

“You might want to ask yourself the same question,” she purrs. Will can hear his pulse in his ears. Before he can do anything ill-advised, he’s distracted by a hand reaching through the crowd, grabbing his wrist, an arm around him.

“Everybody back up,” a voice says, crisp and loud and clear, “I said _back up!_ ”

Will doesn’t know who the woman is, or why she’s here, but she looks at him and he can’t be worried about it. Dark hair and eyes, tall and solid.

She pulls him to her car. She lets him in first, then puts his bag in the back seat as she swings into her chair. The doors locked, she sets off slowly through the following cluster of remaining paparazzi. Will waits for her to navigate her way out of the hospital parking lot, setting off at speed to leave the stragglers behind, his heart beating hard in his chest.

“You know Hannibal,” he says, eventually. She doesn’t say anything, but she nods, eyes on the road as she drives. It’s late evening, and the roads are relatively quiet.

“He sent you?”

“Of course.” She sounds like him, even in those two words. Will watches her the whole journey, until she pulls up outside a hotel. Will peers up at the building, and then looks back at her.

“Get out then,” she says, “and if anyone asks about me, tell them you hired a security detail for your discharge. Here.” She tosses his bag at him, and he gets out. He watches the tail lights of her car disappear, then heads into the hotel. To his not-quite-surprise, he has a room booked under his name.

Homeless and deserted or not, the hotel room makes him smile when he enters: he hasn’t been in a room with a locking door for the last three weeks, and the novelty is so pleasing that he locks it immediately; strips off and locks himself in the bathroom to take advantage of it while he can. He doesn’t think of the last time he was in a hotel room- he barely remembers.

It’s only when he emerges later, clean and wearing a hotel issued bathrobe, that he sees the envelope on the pillow of the bed. He reaches for it at once, moving over the thought of an intruder in the same breath he summons Hannibal inevitably to mind. The envelope is mauve, just his initial on the front in elegant copperplate. He holds it up to his nose and inhales the scent of home. It doesn’t even occur to him that he should call the FBI tip line, or the police. He opens up the thick envelope, and finds inside a thick sheaf of writing paper, and some more pedestrian printer paper. Tucked behind, there’s a passport, drivers’ license, and credit card, all fake. Discarding the latter for now, he unfurls Hannibal’s letter.

_My Dear Will,_

_You have suffered quite the ordeal and borne it all with grace. Now it is their time to flounder in the mire, scrambling for the devil inside themselves, desperate to cast it out. In the meantime, I suggest you rest. You looked tired in your picture. Perhaps a vacation would do you some good, though I suppose that is what got you into this mess in the first place._

_I have not forgotten my promise._

_Yours,_

_H.L._

Behind it, there’s a pencil sketch of Will, his lower stomach punctured with arrows, body draped in linens where he’s reclined.  Pulse quickening to a pounding beat, Will reads the letter over and over, looking at the sketch, before opening up the bedside drawer to hide it. He’ll destroy it, he will, but first, he needs just a minute longer.

Finally, he opens up the printer sheets, eyes skating over the flight reservations with a bottomless feeling of possibility opening in his stomach. He’s going home, wherever that might be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god... it's been so long. If anyone even reads this, thank you, and I'm sorry for the wait. Life strikes again. I can't wait to post the reunion chapter for these boys.  
> Feel free to talk to me or leave a fic prompt for me [here](https://gleamingandwholeanddeadly.tumblr.com/ask). xo


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal waits by the ocean, while Will waits in the trees.

 Suffused in the combination of coastal air, Autumn sunlight, and Bach, Hannibal takes a deep breath as he lowers himself carefully into a chair at the table of his temporary dining room. The windows are open to let the wind gently pull on the silk drapes, ripple over Hannibal’s hair and stir the ornamental adagio in the centrepiece. Outside, he can hear the waves crashing, sea birds calling, and beyond that, silence.

The house sits at the end of thirty kilometres of dirt roads, hidden in plain sight, touched by nothing but the sea and the endless green-brown scrub of the fields. Croatia is closer to home than Hannibal ever intended to be, but the well-loved lighthouse cottage had spoken to him, along with the battered but lovingly maintained cabin cruiser that came with the rental, tethered down on the jetty.

Now, after several weeks of solitary reflection, he’s starting to feel his isolation. He picks up his tablet where it’s lay on the tablecloth, and seeing an alert, he unlocks it and taps onto _Tattlecrime.com._

Freddie Lounds has taken a very keen interest in Will over the weeks since his ‘rescue’, and it’s been a useful resource to him. Having started with clickbait outrage ( ** _TAINTED LOVE: FEDS SUSPECT RIPPER VICTIM “CLOSER TO LECTER THAN FIRST REALISED”_** ), Lounds has done an admirable job of both slandering Will and hailing him a tenacious survivor, playing the doe-eyed submissive to escape the clutches of a deluded madman.

Despite the acrimony he feels reading plebeian drivel she churns out, Hannibal finds himself compelled by her capricious narrative. He clicks on the alerted article and waits for the text to load.

**_WILL GRAHAM VERDICT: ‘UNQUESTIONABLY INNOCENT’_ **

_TORTURED RIPPER VICTIM BELIEVED ‘IRREVOCABLY DAMAGED’ AFTER INVESTIGATION_

_In a tense press conference this morning, a spokesperson for the FBI confirmed that the damning investigation into tragic Ripper survivor Will Graham has found him to be “unquestionably innocent” and “nothing more than the victim of a dangerous, sadistic psychopath”. The spokeswoman added that the FBI had found “no motives or actions that suggested suspicion is warranted”._

_“Mister Graham has undoubtedly been irrevocably damaged by his experiences,” she went on, “and the FBI are taking every action to ensure he has all the support he needs in this difficult time.”_

_Despite the all-clear, there is still a feeling of resentment surrounding the investigation._

_“It’s disgusting that he was investigated in the first place,” said Molly Foster-Graham, according to this reporter’s anonymous source. “Will is a sweet, gentle man, he would never be willingly complicit in any of this craziness. […] He was just a victim.”_

_The inquiry was led by the AIC of the Behavioural Science Unit, Jack Crawford, who initially posited that Graham knew all along about Lecter’s identity following incriminating security footage that showed Graham and Lecter leaving a hotel hand-in-hand._

_However, MRI results from Graham’s hospital stay showed advanced Bacterial Encephalitis: inflammation of the brain, the symptoms of which include hallucinations, loss of time, delirium and confusion. This, coupled with blood panels, suggested that Graham had been not only abducted by Lecter- who was operating under the identity of another victim, renowned scholar Roman Fell- but that he had spent weeks under the influence of a near-lethal cocktail of lethargy and drugs that ironically saved his life._

_“Lecter had been doping Graham with a plethora of drugs to control him,” said an FBI insider, “it was eerie, the thought that had gone into it. We can’t even be sure the Encephalitis wasn’t somehow cultivated.”_

_Among this “plethora” of narcotics was Scopolamine, a powerful inhibitive drug notoriously used to subdue victims of rape and sex trafficking schemes._

_According to the FBI’s interview records, when questioned on Lecter’s motives Graham’s responses were surprisingly practical, though frequently hostile in tone. He asserted that he believed Lecter had needed “a cover” whilst on the lam, and that “it looked stranger for him to be travelling and staying alone whilst posing as Fell”._

_While he insists that his recollections of his time with Lecter are “arguably useless” and that “[he] could not with confidence attest any of [his] memories were real”, he seemed adamant that the nature of Lecter’s attention during his captivity was “never romantically or sexually motivated”._

_“Hannibal Lecter is not compelled by acts of sexual dominance,” he told Crawford, in the same interview, “he would find it inconceivably crude to inflict such things on any of his victims. It is the only consistency his killings show.”_

_How could he know such things? Having sat at the Devil’s table, could Graham have gleaned the truth of him just from simple communication? Having spoken to many ex-colleagues and correspondents of Lecter’s in the past, this reporter can safely assert that Lecter is a charming host, but the confidence in Graham’s deductions is born of more than just enlightening conversation._

_Along with a career in teaching Applied Psychology at The University of Maryland, Graham studied Criminal Psychology at Georgetown, and would have gone on to procure a Doctorate in the subject had it not been for the untimely death of his late father, Parker Graham, following his long battle with depressive alcoholism._

_This proved to be Graham’s undoing, leading to a three month stay in Western State Hospital following what a nurse at the hospital called “a grief-triggered psychological breakdown”._

_"He was always very quiet, but you knew he was decent enough,” said an anonymous tipster, a resident at the hospital who had spent time with Graham during his stay. “I’m not surprised someone like Hannibal Lecter would take an interest in him. He’s an intense young man.”_

_So what now? Can a man who has been trailed by death and horror his whole life ever truly be free of these happenings? Can a man who has captured the public attention so completely – be it through verdicts of innocence or evil – ever return to work as a mild mannered, socially-awkward professor? Will he ever repair his broken mind?_

_Though he declined to give a statement at the conference this morning, Tattlecrime was able to secure a brief phone interview with Mister Graham after the fact._

_When asked what he planned to do now that he was no longer under the scrutiny of the FBI, he simply said: “Take a real [censored] vacation. Stop [censored] calling me, Lounds.”_

_We can only hope that this time, Mister Graham can find the peace he truly needs._

_END._

Hannibal hovers over the picture of Will inline of the article: a pap shot, he’s emerging from his hotel, hair obscured with a woollen beanie, bundled up against the cool weather. He looks as exhausted as he had before their separation, shoulders hunched and hands deep in his pockets. The yellow tinge of jaundice still lingers in his eyes and skin.

Despite the bitter taste in the back of his mouth at the cool indifference implicit in Will’s quotes, Hannibal wonders if he’s eating enough; taking his medication on time. His stitches will need to be removed soon, and he should have had ample time to consider the flights Hannibal has arranged.

Lip curling in frustration, Hannibal flicks his eyes over the related articles tagged at the side of the page, his thoughts a dark and churning mass.

 ** _THAT PIGS COULD FLY: SURVIVING VERGER FAMILY FLEE FOR_** _**SAFETY**_ , screams one. The next brings Hannibal’s breath up short.

**_“WHATEVER HAPPENED, I’M HERE FOR YOU.”_ **

_‘DAMAGED’ WILL GRAHAM SEEKS COMFORT IN THE ARMS OF ESTRANGED WIFE_

 Suddenly aware of every pulse in him, Hannibal clicks on the link. The header is supported by another photo, Will looking just as small and drawn, embracing Molly Foster-Graham in a parking lot. Her gold hair is tossed against his throat and cheek by the wind, her hands tight in his clothes. One of his hands rests on the back of her shoulder, the other hidden from view.

True to Freddie’s usual form, the corresponding article is flimsy and insubstantial, waxing lyrical on their troubled past together: a reaching narrative of rekindled love. She must be out for more clicks than she can get with simple shock reporting, nowadays.

Eyes magnetised back to the photo, Hannibal sees an arrow on the lip and clicks. Another shot, a slightly different angle. Molly’s face serene and sorrowful, Will’s expression imperceptible over her shoulder. His gaze is far away.

Hannibal stands up with such speed that he wrenches the burned skin on his back, but he barely registers the pain. He paces to the window, the creeping tendrils of his thoughts spreading in a thousand directions at once. On the one hand, Will has prevailed on the world so convincingly that he believes Hannibal a monster that even Freddie Lounds has begun to champion him. On the other, he has partially convinced Hannibal, too.

The desire to throw the tablet out the window is so strong that Hannibal’s knuckles whiten, the tension in him painful. He keeps himself rigid and prods the sharp edges of the fury with curiosity, nonplussed. He hasn’t had to fight the impulses of his anger since he was a boy, and now all it’s taken to trigger that same detestable, knee-jerk violence in him is a photo of the man he loves being touched by someone that has no longer has the right to do so. Hannibal isn’t entirely sure who his anger is pointed at, and he doesn’t think it would be productive trying to puzzle it out.

With a long breath, he relaxes his hands, and sets the tablet to one side. His eyes find the tossing waves, a couple of hundred metres from the house. The spray throws up diamond sparks into the sky, the slate grey water beneath swallowing them down again. He watches until all he knows is the sea, and the sky above, the same chilling blue as Will’s eyes. He doesn’t truly doubt him, he realises. He is simply afraid, and he has been afraid before. He can weather it again.

Just a few more days, he tells himself, and all will come clear.

            *

The forest speaks to him in whispers and pleas. He knows, at the edge of the lake where the moon gazes upon her reflection, that the house is near. He must not go there, he must return to the trees.

The water ripples, mercury surface splintered by the bodies of black swans. Hannibal steps back away from the shore, laughter snapping at his heels. He turns on the beat of his heart, and retreats.

As the trees thicken, the moonlight filters more feebly through the thick fir branches, casting pale shadows onto the leaf litter. Hannibal watches the patterns move over his skin, and all at once, he’s aware of silence, and in the depths of the forest, a light.

It feels like hours before he sees it clearly, the cold leeching into his limbs, earth clinging to his shoes. Hannibal can smell the overwhelming cloy of sap and pine, but underneath it something else. Once or twice, he thinks he hears the bleat of an animal, and he hastens through the trees.

A root springs from the loose earth, proverbially or literally he can’t tell. He trips on the buttressed wood and barely catches himself at the edge of a great chasm: a crack in the earth that is slowly devouring trees unfortunate enough to border its edges. Hannibal stumbles on the loose earth, struggling to find his footing for a moment. When he looks up, the moon illuminates wings fluttering amongst the branches. He hasn’t felt so ill at ease with his own company for some time. It’s a cold, gnawing feeling, and one he hasn’t missed.

With a sigh, he starts his path along the edge of the sinkhole, keeping his distance from the yawning darkness. It leads him further from the light, but the gap is too wide to jump, unfathomable in depth, and Hannibal knows from experience that some caverns are too dangerous to traverse alone.

Gradually, when the light has faded from the distance and only the smell of woodsmoke lingers, the sinkhole starts to narrow. Hannibal hastens his step, mindful now of stray brambles and branches, barely feeling the clinging of thorns at his hems.

It narrows sufficiently to step across, soon enough. He lingers at the edge, but then continues a few more metres, compelled by curiosity. In the ground where the sinkhole starts, as if struck into the earth by the hand of God, sits an axe.

Hannibal feels the grip of reflexive fear on his throat. He steps over the gash in the earth, and starts to walk purposefully back along its banks the way he came, leaving the axe behind. It seems a shorter way back to the widest point of the hole, and eventually he can see the light again, closer than before. The bleating sounds once more, and another soft voice. This time, Hannibal takes off at a run.

He stumbles again before long, making a noise of frustration as his knees hit the soil and he scrambles back up. He can hear the crackle of the fire, feel the warmth. Finally, he emerges into the clearing where the glow is brightest, skidding to a halt in the dry leaves, breathless at the sight that greets him.

Curled before the fire, Will cradles the fawn in his arms like the lamb of the lord, gentle fingers tending to the wounds. His face is picked out in changing shades of gold and amber, the lowcast light bringing out the dark circles under his eyes.

For a time, Hannibal can’t find his voice, mute again like he was a child, crippled by Will’s presence. Behind Will, the charred skeleton of the lodge house crouches, ugly and forgotten in the dark. Fighting the compulsion to run again, Hannibal takes a shaky step forward, unnerved to be so affected. Whether it’s Will or the lodge that scares him more, he’s not sure.

“Will it be okay?” Will asks, then. He hitches the fawn higher in his arms, shushing it when it cries. “I got the arrow out, but it looks infected.”

Skirting the fire and kneeling to examine the deer, Hannibal can smell the blood on Will’s shirt and hands, already high with decay. The fawn lays its chin on Will’s shoulder and bleats again softly as Hannibal peers at the wound. Beneath the surface, in the black flesh, something wriggles.

Glancing up to Will’s face, Hannibal sets his mouth in a thin line. Will’s lips bow in return, chin drawing up in dismay. When he looks away, Hannibal sees that distance in his eyes again, and knows that it is pain.

“We’ll do what we can,” Hannibal promises, keeping his voice even, “though we may have to amputate the leg.”

Will nods. With his bloody hand, he reaches out and touches Hannibal’s lips. It’s a seeking contact, his eyes soft and liquid with woe. Hannibal opens his mouth and lets him touch his teeth.

*

When he wakes, it’s to the ding of the tablet beside his bed. He lifts it over his head in the dark, squinting at the brightness, and only starts to think in English again when he can finally read the words. An email from the airline, saying Will has checked in for his flight.

Breathing slowly, Hannibal curbs the fierce surge of relief that rises in his chest. It doesn’t mean anything until he’s on the plane. It doesn’t mean anything until he’s at the door, with his tired eyes and his bags. It doesn’t mean anything if he gets caught.

*

The following forty-eight hours are the longest he’s ever had to wait. Hannibal considers himself an exceptional hobbyist, but nothing seems to fill the hourglass that appears to him, sand clogging in the first balloon. He paints, and he composes, and he writes, and he reads, and he listens. By nightfall, he’s cleaned and laundered everything, including both guest rooms, and now he cooks with an unfamiliar curl of nausea in the pit of his stomach. On the counter, his tablet screen remains black and silent. He’s mincing herbs when it finally blinks with an alert, and his attention is so quickly diverted that he trims into his thumb with the blade.

The act of rinsing, applying pressure, and elevating is just another unwelcome distraction. When Hannibal finally clicks on the bubble with his uninjured thumb, he sees that Will has officially boarded his first flight. He feels a curious lack of relief at the knowledge as he peels away the cloth from his thumb and watches the blood well up.

*

Then, Will is in Croatia. More precisely, he’s at Pula airport. Hannibal stares at the flightpath on his screen, and at the word, ‘Arrived’, and swallows his trepidation. It’s only a short drive from there to Ližnjan, and the car is waiting, along with the SatNav in the glovebox.

Possibly because he needs the air, and possibly because the thought of waiting in the house for him seems so discomfiting, Hannibal pulls on his coat, scarf, and shoes, and heads down to the seafront. The sky overhead is starting to fill with stars even in the evening light. Among them, the moon hangs round and pale.

It’s a short walk to the rocks, but the buffeting wind and thrashing waves makes it an exercise in balance that diverts his mind suitably from the final grains of sand tumbling into the bottom of his stomach. When he looks back at the house, he sees the lights glowing from the windows, and beyond, two cat-eye pinpricks in the distance: headlights on the dirt road. No other lights but those, no pursuing police vehicles. Hannibal watches the beams flare and grow, the car slowing, model indeterminable in the looming dark. It stops, and Hannibal hesitates before he starts to walk back toward the house.

Lit by the porch light, Will emerges from the car, posture stooped with fatigue. He walks around the side of the whitewashed cottage, peering up at it. Hannibal watches as he raises a hand to his chest, and in the same moment, his own heart starts to pound.

“Will,” he calls, softly.

He spins around at once, the shadows swallowing his face and front, the porchlight haloing his hair.

“Hannibal-?”

He sees him, then, and he starts to walk toward him fast, favouring his side. They meet at the edge of the light where the patio ends, and for a moment neither of them move. It’s Hannibal that breaks rank first; it always has been when it comes to Will. He touches his cheek, marvelling like he did the first time when he didn’t flinch away.

“You came.”

“Of course I came. You- you left me behind. You didn’t think I was going to take that lying down, did you?”

“I was counting on the fact that you wouldn’t.” He can’t stop touching his face now, cupping his jaw with both hands, needing to feel the familiarity of his bones. “You look exhausted.”

“I have been on four different flights in twenty-eight hours,” Will says dryly, “you wouldn’t be looking so hot either.”

“Come inside,” Hannibal urges. There’s no hesitation in his nod.

“Help me with my bags?”

It all seems surreally normal. Hannibal takes Will’s suitcase inside for him, feeling his warmth against his back when he stays close. In the house, they shed their layers. Will looks thin and sickly, and though he smells strongly of recycled air and sleep, Hannibal still wraps him up and inhales deeply in his neck, memorising every note of his scent. There’s a faint acidity to it that Hannibal recognises as cirrhosis.

“You’re still unwell,” he murmurs, almost apologetic. Will tucks himself against Hannibal’s body slowly, his movements nearly forced, like he can’t quite shake the instinct to shy away from the man who cut him open.

“It’ll take a while. Just need to be careful.” He blinks a few times, lids visibly drooping. Hannibal supports him when he sags against his chest.

“Will, you need to sleep.”

“Come with me.”

“There’s a guest room, if you would be more-”

“Hannibal.” Will interrupts him sharply, his first sign of resentment. “You- you left me hospitalised so you could kill half a dozen more people, and then you left the country and vanished for weeks. I’m not sleeping in the guest room.”

A beat of silence. Eventually, Hannibal nods. He’s unspeakably pleased.

“Very well.” He releases Will only to let him proceed into the house unhindered. He ignores mostly everything and heads straight for the winding stairs, Hannibal with his suitcase in tow.

“Last right,” Hannibal murmurs at the top of the stairs. Will walks down the corridor like every step hurts and lets himself into the dimly lit bedroom with a sigh. He takes in the mute grey walls and white furniture without comment. Behind him, Hannibal sets his suitcase against the side of the wardrobe, and then moves to him once more, fingertips grazing the hem of his shirt, questioning.

“May I look?”

Turning to him slowly, Will nods. There’s still a guarded steel to his eyes, but mostly Hannibal sees an answering yearning.  Being as careful with him as he knows how to be, Hannibal slides the shirt off his shoulders, and then starts on his belt. Even having thought about him daily, the want Hannibal feels now couldn’t be satisfied by physical means. The act of undressing him is as symbolic as any meal they’ve ever shared; any riddles they’ve exchanged. Hannibal lowers him to the bed when his jeans and shoes are gone and then stands back and undresses himself, down to his underwear. He kneels beside Will on the bed and, with a fleeting glance to check he has permission to do so, carefully pulls up his shirt.

The hepatectomy scar rounds the curve of his lower rib like a bracket, long and cruel. It's still flushed from healing, perforated with the ghost of stitches. Hannibal folds Will’s t-shirt up as he looks at it, setting it aside. When he meets his eyes, Will looks expectant.

Hannibal tilts his head, and gives in. “They did a neat job of sewing it up.”

A nod. Will doesn’t need to say: _Considering what a state you left it in_. A certain amount of credibility was required, at the time, but that’s by the by now. Hannibal skims his fingers tentatively over the line, and Will shivers.

“I want to know what happened,” he starts, “with- the Vergers.”

“It can wait until tomorrow. It won’t seem so bad, tomorrow.”

He nods again. His hands come to Hannibal’s shoulders, fingertips carefully skimming. When they creep down his back, Hannibal stiffens, and Will frowns.

“What’s… _Christ_ , Hannibal…” He sits up, angled to examine the brand between Hannibal’s shoulder blades, still sensitive and raw. His breath shakes out like he’s chilled, but his eyes have gone hot with anger.

“It’s nothing,” Hannibal murmurs, “the pain isn’t bad now, and I have a high tolerance.”

“That’s- he did that to you-?” It chokes him to think of it. Hannibal cups his face again, thumbs soothing along his cheekbone.

“I can assure you, he paid dearly for it.”

“Why did we- why would you go back there if you knew…”

“What would you have done, if I had been put in danger by your past actions?”

That quiets him, but only temporarily. He spreads his hands over Hannibal’s chest like he’s evincing a heart beat, lids dropping in relief when he finds it.

“I missed you,” he breathes, finally. “I missed you and I felt sick with guilt for missing you.”

“Guilt at missing me, or guilt at loving me?”

“Never at loving you,” he says fiercely. “God, I felt guilty because… it felt powerful, to know you like that. I felt vulnerable without you. Hiding that part of you and lying- it felt dirty. I felt like I was abandoning-” he cuts off with a snap of his teeth. Hannibal sees now, in all his petty actions and words, the non-physical wounds, and Freddie Lounds' winding words.

“Abandoning me, the way I abandoned you.”

Teeth sinking into his lower lip, Will looks down. He takes another hard breath.

“It felt like the only thing I could do to find some power again.”

“I understand,” Hannibal whispers. “I know you can only see the worst in me right now, but you have to believe in the best of me too, if only in this. Everything I did was to preserve this.” They’re so close in the gloom, Will’s body curved towards Hannibal’s like the bow of the waves outside, their lips brushing together.

“I forgive you.” Will breathes it into his mouth, hands cupping his flanks. Hannibal closes the gap and exhales hard at the relief of it: a reconnecting of currents, a deluge of water after praying for rain. Will grips at his hair with one hand, keeping them close, and each kiss feels like a new promise and an old one kept, gentle and caressing at first but gradually taking on teeth.

When they pull apart, they’re breathless, and Will is blinking rapidly against exertion. With some effort, Hannibal moves carefully away to turn off the lights, before pulling the duvet over them both as he slips back into bed beside him. Without needing to be prompted, Will carefully positions himself within the bracket of his body, breaths cycling cool and warm against his chest. They watch one another for a long, silent stretch. It feels like remembering and committing.

“Back where we started,” Hannibal murmurs, remembering their first night with a keen fondness. Will had been half-afraid then too, tired and overwrought. Hannibal, like now, had been hopeful.

“Back where we started,” Will agrees, pressing a kiss to the underside of his chin. “Tomorrow, we’ll get to know each other again.”

Hannibal leans and kisses him one last time. He strokes his hair through his hair, gentling, feeling the slow release of tension in increments against his body. He waits until his breaths are steady and slow, and then with a careful hand he covers the scar on Will’s torso, feeling its heat.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I think the next chapter might be the final one in this series, at least for this arc. I'll be sure to make it a good one. If you're still with me, thanks! 
> 
> Fun fact- the house Hannibal is staying in exists, it's in the middle of nowhere, and [you can rent it for vacations](https://www.oneoffplaces.co.uk/destinations/Europe/Croatia/marlera-lighthouse). Obviously in this scenario we can assume Hannibal either bought it or murdered the previous occupants, that's really up to you.
> 
> As you can probably tell, I would make a really bad journalist, and I have no clue where Will went to university. Sorrynotsorry. Feel free to point it out if anything is really intolerably wrong. 
> 
> As always, you can find me [here](http://gleamingandwholeanddeadly.tumblr.com). <3!


End file.
